Judoon Justice
by Harold Saxon
Summary: When the 10th Doctor succeeds to rescue the Master from the TimeLock he faces the forces of the Lady Shadow Architect and her followers who are keen on bringing the Master to justice. Noncanon, post TEOT. COMPLETED
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Judoon Justice**

**Spoilers**: post The End of Time, non-canon

**Part of Series:** Judoon Justice belongs to a series called A Timelord and his Madman, which actually starts with "His Silent Mind", and can be considered as a sequel, but can also be read as a stand-alone. For those who want to read it as a stand-alone, read the short summary for "His Silent Mind". For those who want to catch up with the first story, go to my author's profile and find the story there.

**Characters:** The 10th Doctor, The Master (John Simm), Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble, The Shadow Architect.

**Many thanks to my wonderful reviewers:** Edzel2, Shatterfly, T'Kei and Lena for their suggestions and corrections! I've revised chapter 1 and 2 accordingly. With your help, I can become a better writer, so I'm always glad to receive constructive reviews.

**Summary for His Silent Mind:**

The 10th Doctor didn't sacrifice himself to save Wilf, because he wasn't there in the final scene to lock himself in the radiation-booth. The Master disappeared with the Timelords, seemingly lost with the others as Gallifrey fell in the final days of the Time war. After sending Wilf home with his family, the Doctor starts to wander alone in the universe, trying to find the Master using the remains of the white point star as a guidance. His quest brings him to a hostile planet that balances on the verge of a blackhole. There he finds the Master imprisoned in a dark tower. He has survived the destruction of Gallifrey by the mercy of the Doctor's guarding angel, but has lost his mind after Rassilon cut out the drums from him as retaliation. For the first time since he was a child and had stared in the untempered schism, the Master experienced something what could be cognized as guilt, and the remorse he felt for his crimes combined with the solitude he was forced to endure inside his prison actually had driven him insane. When the Doctor tries to convince him to leave, the Master refuses, knowing that he cannot escape the doomed planet without triggering its destruction and taking the Doctor with him. The Master tricks the Doctor in leaving the planet with his human companions, but the Doctor manages to pull a last minute rescue to free the Master from the tower before the planet was swallowed by the blackhole and destroyed. However, the Master's mind has suffered greatly and has deteriorated into a recessive, unconscious state. The Doctor, determined to save his childhood friend, decides to leave the Tardis suspended in time while he enters the Master's mind in an effort to heal him.

**Synopsis:**

Just when the Doctor succeeds to bring the Master back to some form of consciousness, the Tardis encounters the fleet of the Shadow Proclamation. The Master is taken from board, and the Doctor faces the forces of the Lady Shadow Architect and her followers as they are keen on bringing the Master down to Judoon Justice.

**Chapter 1**

**Operation Fallen Angel**

**1.**

_I've never been any good at telling stories._

_Others might tell stories, about me and my companions. What we have done. All the good and splendid, all the amazing adventures and last-call rescues that has sustained the universe as it is until this very day. In the old days, I used to revel in that knowledge that where ever or when ever I go there would be people remembering me, singing their songs about my deeds over vast shifting dunes of sand, over icy fields of snow, and over harsh wind swept mountains, recalling my actions to their children and their children's children._

_But nowadays, it all seems so utterly futile, so empty._

_So very meaningless._

_I'm nearing the end of my 13th regeneration. A Timelord of Gallifrey running on his last legs. The Tardis of course, wouldn't exactly call it running. 9133 years old, I'm lucky if I could still get up in the night and shuffle to the toilet in time. Without knowing, old age has settled into my bones and seeped right into the marrow like patient, tireless drops of water would eventually seep into stone. Back, in my earliest incarnations, I had never managed to reach a ripe old age. Why would one be careful if one had so many lives to spare? However, as the number of incarnations left to me dwindled, I've learned to live more cautious and more sensible. Me, sensible! Who would have thought! The last life I've lived before this one, I actually died in my sleep as an old man and woke up the next day, refreshed and reborn. I threw the blankets off, jumped right out of my bed and ran out of the Tardis into the starlight of some God-forsaken planet._

_I wish he had seen me then. I would have made him proud._

_This time, something similar would probably happen, knowing the lazy old fool that I've become, but there won't be a spring in my steps when I get up the following morning. This time, there won't be a following morning._

_And I am at peace with that._

_I really am._

_The Tardis hisses and churns. She thinks that I'm a crazy old sod, trying to comfort myself by hiding behind a brave face. Most of the time, she knows me better than I do, but this time I cannot keep myself from speaking aloud to her about how wrong she is to think that I fear death. True, when I was very young, I used to be absolutely terrified by it. But now, what do I have left to lose?_

_Stop rambling you crazy fool. Stop being pathetic. You've got a pressing task at hand, and very little time left in this old body._

_You've got a story to tell._

_With some effort, I shuffle closer to the Tardis, my joints stiff with arthritis and the cane in my hand trembling. Staring into the soft green glow of her living heart, I recall the days when this Timelord was still young, and the stars in the universe still shone brightly with its hidden secrets, all beckoning to be explored._

_Gently, I whisper my words into her._

**2.**

It started exactly here. Right here where I'm standing, next to the heart of the Tardis, in the console room. An anxious Timelord, a mad maverick, a saintly savior with a brilliant brain and equally bold backbone, who could at times, act like a complete irrational idiot, stood behind the console and confronted the alien whose rhinoceros-like head filled the entire holoscreen in front of him. His name was the Doctor, and he was one of the last of his kind. The other one who was left, the other remaining child of Gallifrey who was his reluctant and perhaps also unconscious Timelord companion, was missing.

"What did you do to him?!" The Doctor snapped angrily, staring the Judoon right into his beady eyes.

The officer seemed not to be in the mood to answer any questions. "Sko, Lo, Vo, Do, Do, Mo, Ro, Wo?"

"I'm not telling you anything until you tell me where he is!"

"Wo, Wo, So, So, Ho, Ko, Xo!"

"For the last time, I don't care! My ship isn't undefended. You give me your best try!"

Without wasting another breath on him, the Judoon barked his commands to his officers, and sent out two missiles. The blasts of the impact tilted the Tardis to the side and the Doctor was just in time to hold on to a lever, any lever. His hand hit a red button that sent the Tardis tilting back the other way. He was smashed against the console, but at least he no longer had trouble reaching for the controls for the protection shield.

"Qo, Zo, Mo, Go, Go, No, Vo!"

"No, I would not lower my defense shield for you! Why in the name of stone cold logic would I ever do that?" The Doctor asked.

There was a long silence as the Judoon's mind needed some considerable time to process the message.

"KO WO RO!!"

"Ah so you finally decided to be offended by it, good for you."

"Ho Go Yo RO WO!!!"

"No, and I will certainly not do that! Blimey, watch that language! Drunken Purivian sailors use politer swearwords!"

The holoscreen flashed and the Judoon officer was replaced by a tall woman dressed in all black. She was in her late forties. Her natural hair was hidden underneath a white judge wig, while her face was pale and slim, almost androgynous, but still strikingly beautiful in symmetry.

"Doctor, in the name of the Shadow Proclamation, stop this madness at once!"

"Ah, finally! Someone who doesn't have trigger-happy loon written all over his face to speak to. My Lady Architect, how are you? I'm fine, actually, except that I am missing my friend here." The Doctor rambled on, not even giving her a chance to speak. He was beyond the polite small talk. "He was swept up by one of your ships when the Tardis was caught in the line of a transmission beam, by accident I suppose. Also one of yours I believe. Now, who should I be holding responsible for this?!" He spat, his eyes blazing dangerously.

"We are fully aware of what happened. The transmission line was not an accident. I demand that you stop chasing our fleet."

"I want him back! What do you want him for anyway?"

"Don't try to fool us Doctor. We know that your companion is not an ordinary man. He's the Timelord called the Master. We have records of his crimes dating back from the very beginning of the intergalactic court. The man you are trying to rescue is dangerous to the whole of creation and should be apprehended."

"Oh come on! Have you actually taken a look at him? He's harmless now! He can't be the scourge of creation, not in his state."

"Soon after we've discovered that the scorched remains of Gallifrey had reemerged out of the Timelock, we also found that the Timelords of old had sealed this dangerous madman underneath the surface of the doomed planet. I'm sure they had good reason to do so."

"That wasn't to imprison him! The elders sealed the Master inside an Ark to protect him from the destruction of Gallifrey. I should know, I was the one who rescued him from that horrible place."

"I don't know what your exact reasons are for protecting him Doctor, but if you continue to interfere with the processes of justice, we will be inclined to use force!"

"What? Are you going to shoot at the Tardis again? Didn't you try that before? And didn't that fail to even scratch the paintwork?" The Doctor answered cockily.

"Mister Baines refrained from using the laser-canons on their maximum capacity. That won't happen again when we fire for a second time."

"Oh I never believe that it was mister Baines his own luminous idea to keep back firepower. Somehow he doesn't strike me as that much of a thinker." The Doctor said. "Listen to me lady Architect, the Master isn't well. He needs to get back here inside the Tardis, with me. I've asked you once nicely, and a second time more urgently, but now I would REALLY like my friend back, or else…"

The Shadow architect leaned closer towards the screen, her chin raised up high in defiance. "Or what, Doctor?"

"Or else you're gonna feel the full wrath of a Timelord." He stated, eyes unblinking.

The Architect sucked in a deep breath of air. "You wouldn't."

The Doctor didn't respond, but his eyes remained fixed on the screen, his resolve unbreakable.

"Mister Baines." The Shadow Architect turned and spoke into a holovid screen at her left hand side that kept an open communication line with the other ships. "It pains me to give this order, but fire at maximum force."

The Judoon officer barked out another order, and four additional missiles, all of them more powerful and larger than the first ones, were launched from the cannons into space, their target set on the Doctor's Tardis.

"You shouldn't have done that." The Doctor said calmly while he was tapping away on his keyboard like mad and tracked down the missiles on the radar screen.

"And why is that?"

"I've just maximized the Tardis' protection shield, which means that it is about to reflect those nasty blasts right back to where it came from." The Doctor answered, pulling down the last lever.

The Architect shot a nervous glance at the large radar screen behind her. All four missiles that had been sent out collided with the invisible protection barrier surrounding the Tardis and bounced back, heading straight for the front line of the fleet of the Shadow Proclamation.

"We've got incoming!" A Shadow officer yelled.

The Architect and her officers swayed violently to the side when a missile brushed by their ship, missing it hardly by a few meters of distance. She glanced up at the radar screen where two of the four missiles passed through her convoy without a hit and vanished into outer space. Two of the others however, crashed right into the small cargo ship at the far left flank of the fleet. A massive blast followed. The impact sent the spacecraft spinning, straight towards the heart of a wormhole.

"Doctor!" The Architect covered her mouth with a thin trembling hand. "How could you!"

"I wasn't the one who fired." The Doctor justified with pain in his hearts. He knew he shouldn't, but he still felt responsible.

"Oh the irony of this!" The Architect exclaimed.

"How do you mean?" The Doctor frowned. "What's on that ship?" He asked when he noticed the anxious expression on the Architect's face.

"My Lady Architect. The prison ship has disappeared from the radar." A Shadow officer behind the radar console reported.

The Doctor froze. "The Master was onboard? He was onboard of that ship?!"

"Thanks to you, we both have lost him!" The Architect snapped. "Mister Marvel, where does that wormhole lead to?"

"It heads into the direction of Galaxy 44541. It should open in the arm of Orion at position 1245 Z, 5564 X, 3215 Y from the Galaxy's center."

"Fix our fleet on that position. We are heading down there immediately. And you, Doctor, you should stay where you are and stop intervening, or else we will certainly arrest you for-"

She stared into nothing but static. The Doctor had already switched off the communication line and was sending the Tardis down the wormhole. The doomed prison ship he was chasing had lost control over its steering and was how tumbling helplessly down the vortex towards Galaxy 44541, a distant star-system that was also known to one of the inhabiting species, as the Milky Way.

**3.**

_At the other end of the wormhole vortex the Judoon prison ship emerged, engulfed in a white blast of plasma light as it headed straight for a tiny blue spot of a planet called Earth. For the panicking Judoon soldiers on board, this planet meant next to nothing, and was but a very inconvenient rock in the sky that happened to be spinning right within their collision course. For the prisoner however, it would make all the difference in the world for this was the planet, where the Doctor had many loyal friends._

_The course of the Judoon prison ship was clear like that of a falling star in the night's sky for anyone who would had cared to look at that particular time on the northern hemisphere. But as it happened, only an old man sitting on a camp chair in front of his tin shed on the hilltop near the city of London saw it pass by. The tail of the vessel burned like that of a comet's, and for a moment he thought it actually might be one. But then he took a closer look through his trusted telescope and saw that he wrong._

_He was so very wrong._

It wasn't till the next day when Wilfred Mott was watching the morning news on the telly that he found out where that burning metal thing that fell out of the sky had gone. With an excited rattle in his old heart he was about to call his friend Winston when Sylvia rushed into the living room for a last minute check.

"So I've put all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Should be ready in an hour or so, so don't forget to turn it off when it's finished. Telephone numbers are on the kitchen table." She turned to her father and waved her finger at him. "I know you and Donna have my mobile number, but I'll leave the number of Sarah and that of the hotel here, just in case. Right, what else?"

"Nothing I guess." Wilf shrugged impatiently. "Shouldn't you be going, luv? I thought you wanted to be up there in Scotland before noon?"

"Yes, we did, but that's madness of course, considering the horrible weather." Sylvia glanced at the telly but Wilf quickly changed channels before she could pick up anything from the news.

"Oh dad! Switch that back, I wanted to see the weather broadcast."

"Oh there is nothing to worry about." Wilf muttered, and ushered his daughter away from the television and out into the hallway. "No snow or hail or anything. So it should be all right. You should get on your way now. You don't want Sarah to wait for too long."

Sylvia wanted to protest, but then reconsidered. "You're right, you know how she is. Last time I was slightly delayed on one of her dinner parties and I never heard the end of it." She picked up her hand luggage and her shoulder bag. "Now, remember to reheat the meals in the fridge at 600 Watts for 3 minutes exactly. Don't even think about eating anything without heating it up properly! And everything is labeled, so don't mix your Tuesday meal with that of Friday's. I'll be calling home as soon as we get there."

"Right sweetheart." Wilf helped her into her coat, and brought her suitcases to the car to hurry her up. "You have fun. And don't worry. We'll stick to your labels."

"Don't forget to water the plants, especially those in my bedroom. I don't want to come home and find my violets wilted away into a green mush. And don't forget to put the bins out on Friday!" Sylvia shouted out of the rolled down side window as she reversed and drove her car out onto the street. Wilf saluted as if he was following an order in the army. He waved after her and watched her disappear around the corner before he rushed back inside. He switched back to BBC one where regional news was still reporting on the crash landing of a small private airplane in the area near Brixton. Fortunately, the aircraft crashed into a small open park and didn't hit any of the buildings nearby. Strangely enough, nothing was reported about the fate of the passengers. Wilf picked up the phone and punched in Winston's number.

The line went over. "Winston! Did you catch the news?" Wilf exclaimed excitedly. "That spaceship I told you about last night. The one I saw through my telescope. It's right here in London. Yes, yes! It's on the telly right now."

The news reporter in the studio was replaced by footage of the scene, showing a large blackened crater in the middle of a wide lawn. A huge plastic tent had been erected around the wreckage and curious bystanders were kept at bay behind the yellow police tape. Policemen and rescue workers dressed in what looked like white plastic space suits were coming and going. Somewhere at the back, Wilf even noticed the presence of army soldiers standing on guard with their riffles in their hands. Then the camera swept across the park, and Wilf eyes caught a glimpse of a statue of a weeping angel." He pointed at the screen in astonishment.

"Hang on there, Winston. I recognize this! This is in Sheppard Park, near Minnie's house! Oh my God, I hope she's all right. What? Of course it's dangerous! You never know with those aliens. They're not all of them like the Doctor or those nice green cacti people I told you about."

Wilf switched off the telly and rushed into the hallway to grab his coat and wooly hat.

"No I don't think it's safer now that the army is dealing with it." He shouted, nudging his mobile against his shoulder while he slipped into his coat. "It's exactly when the government is involved and it's kept all hush hush that you really should start to worry." He patted down the pockets of his trousers and coat. "Keys, Keys! Where did I leave those silly things?" He mumbled. "Ah!" He picked them up from the side table below the mirror. It was marked with a yellow post-it on which Sylvia had written in big red letters: HERE ARE YOUR KEYS DAD, DON'T FORGET TO TURN OFF THE DISHWASHER BEFORE YOU GO OUT.

Wilf sighed and went into the kitchen. "What do you mean, am I going to do something stupid? Off course not Winston. I'm just going to make sure that Minnie is all right. She does live all on her own you know." Wilf noticed that the dishwasher was still running, but getting impatient, he just turned the damned thing off while it still had thirty minutes or so to go.

"Yes, yes. I'm going to call her. Right after this." Convinced that Sylvia won't have anything to nag about, he left the house in a hurry.

**4.**

He took the tube to Brixton station before heading down to Minnie's place. On his way he passed right by the weeping angel statue and the very site of the crash. A small crowd was still gathered around the black crater, peering down into the pit to catch a glimpse of the aircraft wreckage. Wilf had no idea that the thing was so bloody huge. Judging by the size of the tent, the object covered up by large plastic sheets was at least as big as a three double decker busses. Wilf pushed through the crowd and had just reached the sticky yellow police tape when a police officer stepped up to the crowd.

"People! Please get away from the crash site! You're holding up the rescue workers!"

"Excuse me officer, but what are those folks doing down there?" Wilf asked, pointing at the plastic space suit men. "Why are they wearing those weird suits?"

"That's just standard procedure sir. They are checking for any radiation leakage. We're clearing the area, so if you would be so kind to leave sir?"

"Radiation? That's sounds dangerous. Shouldn't you warn everybody who lives around here? Evacuate them to somewhere safe?"

"Don't you worry sir, everything is under control. They are just checking, so far we haven't received any warnings from the techs-"

"How about the people who flew this thing? Did anyone survive?"

"I don't know sir. I'm just here to clear the scene. Now could you please cooperate and move along?" The young officer tilted his eyebrows and gently but firmly ushered Wilf to the back.

Wilf turned and caught sight of a group of what seemed to be paramedics carrying an empty hospital stretcher. They were flanked by four military men and were rushing down into the pit.

"Oh my Lord, there're still people trapped in that wreckage!" Wilf shouted.

"Sir! Please! Move along!" The officer ordered, getting rather impatient with him.

Reluctantly, Wilf pulled his wooly hat down over his ears and walked back to the main road. He glanced back over his shoulder multiple times in the hope to catch a glimpse of the paramedics returning, but they had disappeared inside the plastic tent and didn't show up again before he reached the end of the street.

**5.**

As soon as Captain Montgomery arrived with his men at the crash-site he headed straight for the young Unit officer who was in charge of operation FALLEN ANGEL, which was named so after the location where the extraterrestrial vehicle was found. The young officer, a lad in his late twenties, seemed nervous when he saluted his senior in command. A man with many responsibilities, very little time, and even less patience, the Captain made a mental note to himself that he should file a request to the head office to stop sending out the juniors to do the fieldwork. It was clear that they weren't up for the job.

"Officer Goodchild." Montgomery said with an automated air of superiority. "You've requested backup. Two troops of fifteen men each."

Yes sir." Goodchild responded, keeping his spine and head straight. "I did indeed."

"Couldn't you and your men handle a code yellow incident on your own?"

"I'm sorry sir. But this is no ordinary crash-landing."

Montgomery observed the young officer with an eyebrow raised.

"What do you mean? Did any one of them survive?"

"We found bodies inside the ship's wreckage, burned to a cinder and absolutely unrecognizable. The ship's log identified them as soldiers of the Judoon race."

"Judoons." Montgomery mused. "That's only a level 1 threat, if any. You didn't need to call back to the headquarters to request for backup, just to clean up a couple of bodies, did you?" He snorted.

"Of course not sir. It's just –" Goodchild hesitated. "Well we're not sure that all of the aliens on board of the ship died in the crash."

"How can you not be sure?" Montgomery asked, irritated.

"According to the ship's records, they had a prisoner onboard. There should be four passengers in total, but we only recovered three bodies. If you would follow me sir." Goodchild led his senior towards the edge of the crater.

"We also found these." The young officer pointed down at the ground where someone had crawled out of the blackened pit right in front of the weeping angel statue. The good Captain could hardly believe his eyes. There, in the lawn was a trail of footsteps, consisting of incinerated patches of grass. The two Unit officers followed it all the way to the street, where it crossed the road and left dented markings in the ground.

"But that's impossible!" The Captain uttered, his eyes wide in astonishment. "Look how these footsteps are melted into the asphalt! The man who made these must have been on fire, burning to death! No-one could have survived this."

"No human could survive this, sir. Nor a Judoon, apparently. However, the records didn't state which race of alien the prisoner belonged to."

"Which makes this a code red hazard." Montgomery quickly composed himself. "You did well officer Goodchild." He admitted, impressed by the young man's clear judgment. "I will hand my men over to your command immediately. Make sure you find him!"

"Yes sir!" Goodchild replied dutifully, jumping into a perfect salute.

**6.**

Minnie Hooper lived in a narrow, but cozy two-story terrace house with a small front garden. Wilf stepped up to her porch, rang the doorbell and waited. On his way to Minnie's place he had tried numerous times to call her on his mobile, but she wouldn't pick up the phone. After what he had seen in Sheppard park, Wilf was getting all kinds of horrible scenarios in his head, so when she didn't answer the door immediately, he pushed down the doorbell again, and hopped impatiently on the tips of his shoes to take a peek through the frosted glass panel. To his relief, he finally saw her shuffling down the corridor. When Minnie opened the door she looked rather puzzled at first, but she quickly relaxed when she discovered that it was Wilf.

"Wilf, oh I'm so glad you turned up. I've got a bit of a problem. Maybe you can help."

She pulled him inside the hallway and locked the door behind her.

"Minnie, are you all right?" Wilf asked worriedly. "I called you a couple of times but you didn't pick up your phone."

"Were you? Oh I'm sorry dear, I was in the cellar, can't hear a thing down there really. Must have missed it." She chatted absentmindedly. "Uhm, could you wait here for a moment, I just need something from the kitchen." She quickly returned with a large carton of milk.

"Can you follow me down into the cellar?" She said as she opened the door underneath the staircase. There was a narrow staircase that led down into the underground space. The wooden steps were illuminated by a single light bulb dangling from the cobwebbed ceiling.

"What is this all about?" Wilf asked, finding Minnie's behavior rather strange.

"Oh. It's just –" Minnie paused. "Actually. It's rather difficult to explain."

"Try me." Wilf said as he followed her down the stairs.

"Well, you know those youngsters I told you about who are always playing in front of my house? Yesterday, they shot a ball through my cellar window. It made a great mess off course, glass everywhere. I was so upset. I phoned mister Zabotin right away and asked if he could come to fix it, but he didn't have the time till next week. So now when it rains it gets inside and I had to ask that nice neighbor of mine, mister Finch, to move the boxes away from the window to keep everything from getting wet."

"So, you want me to come down here and fix the window for you?" Wilf asked.

"Oh no dear, of course not. Mister Zabotin always does a wonderful job, and I know how you are at fixing things. I've seen that tin shed of yours on top of the hill. Not that's it bad." Minnie quickly added. "It's really sweet of you to offer." Suddenly, she was getting a bit nervous.

They were standing at the bottom of the staircase. Minnie's cellar was heavily stacked with carton boxes and old furniture. Down here, the light of the light bulb upstairs hardly reached, leaving the already confined space very gloomy. Wilf saw the narrow window like a square of white sitting against the dark wall. A cold draft swept through the opening and mixed with the damp, underground air. Most of the shards were removed, but some of them still stood upright in the woodwork frame like a row of broken teeth. Wilf squinted his eyes. It could be his overly active imagination, but wasn't one of the shards stained by a thin line of crimson?

"Minnie, did you cut yourself?" Wilf asked worriedly.

Minnie shook her head. "Oh no, It's not mine. It's probably from that man who's hiding in here." She explained and peered around the corner of a stack of boxes. "I think he might still be bleeding."

"Sorry luv." Wilf shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose in amazement. "You lost me there. There is a man down here?"

Minnie nodded. "First I thought it was a cat. The ginger one from the neighbors does come into the garden quite often. I came down here to sweep up the glass when I heard a strange noise, like something was scuttling away behind the boxes. When I took a better look at it I found that it wasn't a cat at all." She pushed a very reluctant Wilf closer to her intruder's hiding place.

"You go and have a look and tell me how he looks like."

"Oh Minnie! I can't believe you! If there's a strange man in your cellar you shouldn't be coming down here! You should be calling the police!" Wilf urged. His hand flew up and covered his mouth as he realized that the intruder could probably hear them. "What were you thinking! He could have been a burglar. He could have hurt you, or worse!" He whispered.

"No Wilfred, you really should take a look at his face. And he isn't dangerous. I think he's hurt."

Reluctantly, Wilf inched closer and peered around the corner. Hiding behind the wooden legs underneath an old desk sat a frightened young man with his back against the corner. He was dressed in a battered outfit that was burned and blackened. His hair was a dirty straw-color with strands of grey around the temples. His face, covered in soot and grime, was gaunt with hard cheekbones, and carried a thin but coarse stubble. He stared back at Wilf with deep sunken eyes.

Wilf sucked in a breath of air.

That face.

He knew that face.

He staggered back in wide eyed shock and bumped into Minnie.

"Oh, that's no good." Wilf muttered. "That's bad. That's really bad."

"I didn't want to call the police." Minnie explained, holding on to her old friend as she tried to steady him. "It's him isn't it? That face we saw in our dreams around Christmas. It's this man."

Wilf rubbed his hand over his face. He was indeed the Master, but what the bloody hell was he doing here? The last time he had seen that monster, he had disappeared with the other Timelord aliens into that time portal thing. The Doctor had promised him that those horrible Timelords would never return to Earth. He said that they were sealed inside some sort of time bubble. But now he found that the Master had returned and was hiding inside Minnie's cellar.

"Oh this is completely bananas." Wilf muttered, shaking his head as he continued to back away. He almost stepped on a ceramic bowl. Wilf glanced down.

"What's this?"

"Oh, let me." Minnie picked it up, poured some milk out of the carton into the bowl, and placed it back on the floor right in front of the Master. "Here you go." She said gently, as if she was speaking to some harmless stray pet. Needless to say, Wilf thought that she had completely lost her marbles and immediately pulled her away from him.

"What are you doing?!" Wilf asked, horrified.

"I was just giving him some milk. He was really thirsty."

"Minnie, he's not a cat! He's a grown man. No actually, he's not a man."

Wilf paused and pinched his nosebridge again. "Oh how do I tell you this? He's an alien. He's a dangerous monster. You have no idea what he's capable of, but you have to believe me, I've seen it with my own eyes."

"Oh really." Minnie muttered, observing Wilf's anxiety with a mild worried frown. "That's strange, he doesn't look that dangerous to me." She glanced over his shoulders. Wilf turned around and followed Minnie's gaze.

Tempted by the milk, the Master had crawled out of his hiding place on his hands and knees towards the small ceramic bowl and drank hungrily, loudly slurping up the creamy liquid while shooting up anguished glances at the two humans.

"I think he's more afraid of us than you are of him." Minnie said.

Puzzled by the Master's behavior, Wilf took a hesitant step forward. The Master coiled back, knocking the bowl over with his elbow and spilling the milk all over the floor.

"Hang on." Wilf muttered. "Something isn't right here."

"What's not right dear?" Minnie asked.

"The Master, I mean this man, he shouldn't be like this. The last time I saw him, he was completely mad and evil. And he was cunning. He could turn a situation to his own hand in a split second. I'm telling you Minnie, he was clever, I mean really, really clever, like the Doctor. Look at him now."

Wilf glanced into the Master's eyes. They stared back at him, large with fear.

"What happened to all that malicious wit of yours? Are you hiding it?" Wilf studied his face. "Is this one of your dirty tricks again? So you could get to the Doctor?"

The Master didn't answer him. There was just that frightened vacant stare.

"What's the matter? Can't you speak?" Wilf frowned. The Master swallowed and licked his dry lips. Moving like a thirsty animal, he bowed down quickly and started licking up the milk from the floor.

"Oh don't do that!" Wilf exclaimed, and then he finally noticed the horrific burns on the Master's hands and neck. The skin was all red and blistered, and was coming off in large flakes.

"You're burnt." Wilf had seen burn victims before when he was in the army. Those men were completely dehydrated and needed fluid infusions to keep their bodies going. No wonder that the poor sod was so thirsty. Before Wilf realized it, he had picked up the bowl and had filled it to the rim with milk from the carton. As he watched how the Timelord eagerly gulped down mouthfuls, he wondered if he wasn't being tricked into feeling sorry for that swine. After all, he did try to kill Donna and the Doctor just a couple of months ago. And didn't he turn everyone on Earth into a clone of his mad self? Whatever awful thing had happened to him and had turned him from a bloodthirsty madman into such a pitiful wreck, surely it was all well deserved.

Still, Wilf remembered what the Doctor had said to him, right before he left.

He squatted down in front of the Master, trying to get contact.

"You came here in that space ship that crashed down in Sheppard park, didn't you? What happened to the rightful owners? Don't tell me you own that thing. Did you kill them, steal their ship?" Wilf eyed at the malicious cut that sliced through the soot-covered fabric of the Master's sleeve. It was caked with dried up blood.

"Are there people out there, aliens who are still looking for you?" Wilf asked, and pointed at the tiny cuts on the Master's cheeks. "Maybe that's why you came down here. You were stumbling down the streets after the crash, injured and looking for a place to hide, you found the broken window and crawled right through."

"Is he a friend of that handsome Doctor man?" Minnie asked innocently as she was still fully unaware of what had exactly happened at the Naismith mansion.

"Oh, no absolutely not!" Wilf breathed, but then he hesitated, recalling the strange chemistry between the two. "At least, I don't think he is." He added, rubbing his beard.

"You don't sound so sure."

"Yeah, well, all I do know is that we need to get the Doctor here to find out what's happening. Whenever this bloke shows up things always turn out for the worst."

"Oh, shall I ring round the Silver Cloak?" Minnie asked with an excited glint in her eyes.

Wilf nodded. "If you could do that. I'll keep an eye on him while you're at it."

After Minnie went up to the study to find the list of phone numbers, Wilf emptied the rest of the carton into the bowl. As he watched how the wretched Timelord gulped the milk down hastily and licked it clean till the very last drop, he couldn't help but think how the mighty had fallen.

**7.**

The Doctor landed in the middle of a street somewhere in London. He headed out of the Tardis, and immediately recognized the surroundings.

This was Wessex Lane.

This was the street where Donna lived.

Puzzled and irritated, the Doctor rushed back inside before realizing that he still didn't know where to go. He ran out into the street again. This didn't make any sense. Why did the Tardis land here? He had tracked down the defunct prison ship to the edge of the solar system and had seen it crashing as it burnt through the Earth's atmosphere. He knew it had landed somewhere in the northern hemisphere, somewhere in Europe, but he didn't know exactly where.

It was in desperate times like these when the Doctor had ran out of any good ideas that he would let the Tardis decide. He would put his trusted companion on autopilot and let it run on her primal instincts. The Tardis was much, much older than the Doctor, and for reasons he could not entirely comprehend, she was always more aware of the events in time that shaped his life. But asking her for help didn't always supply him with a clear answer.

"Why here? Why land in Wessex Lane? Why right in front of Donna's house?" he clutched his hair as he thought it through. "Is it because she is the only one who can tell me where he is?" He mused aloud, recalling the events of last Christmas. "Is that it?"

He stared back at the Tardis, but the blue box remained silent. Where was a verbal companion when he needed one? His mind turned frantically. Then he locked the Tardis, and hesitantly, he headed towards the Noble residence.

**8.**

"You know, this is getting troublesome." Wilf said to the Master, who had finished the milk and seemed to be more at ease with his presence now. At least he didn't go right back into hiding.

"With you never speaking a word, I can't figure out anything. Maybe we could communicate in another way, hey?" He tapped on the side of his head. "I don't think you're that off in the head, otherwise you wouldn't have found this place. So what do you say?"

The Master stared back at him and grimaced when he nervously peeled off the crust from his wounds. He seemed to be particularly fixated on the ruined skin on his left wrist.

"Oh don't do that." Wilf turned away for a moment, appalled by the sight. "Now, if you could just nod when you want to say yes, and shake your head when you mean no. Could you do that?"

There was a very long moment during which the Master didn't move at all, and just kept staring back at Wilf with that vacant look in his eyes.

"Hello? Contact!" Wilf waved his hand in front of the Master's nose. "Anyone home in there?"

It was just when Wilf was about to give up on the whole idea when the Master gave the slightest, tiniest of nods.

"Ha! Right! That's more like it!" Wilf rubbed in his hands. "Now let's get cracking." He leaned forward towards the Master who scrabbled back immediately, glaring up at the human with a hint of distrust on his face.

"No, no, I'm not going to hurt you." Wilf reassured. He was slightly aware of how ridiculous it was that the Master was afraid of him, and it was not actually the other way around.

"I just want to know this. The Doctor. Last time I saw him he told me he was going to look for you. I didn't get it at the time, because he also told me that you were sent back to that red planet that was locked in some sort of time-balloon thing. But he picked up what was left of that diamond and headed off in his Tardis. He said he was going to rescue you from your own destruction. Now, tell me. And please be honest. Did the Doctor manage to find you?"

The Master looked at him as if the concept of most of the things that Wilf had said to him had completely eluded him, but as the human mentioned the name of the Doctor, his eyes flashed with sudden alertness.

Wilf studied the change on the Master's face. "And? Did the Doctor find you?"

Slowly, the Master nodded.

A broad smile swept over the senior's face. "He did! He did, didn't he?! He found you! That's why you're here! HA!" Wilf slapped his hand flat on his knee in excitement. "I knew it! I knew he would succeed! No-one else but the Doctor could have pulled that one off! He brought you back from the dead!"

The Master watched how the old man performed a little dance in the cellar, waving his hands and jigging about like a youngster, doing a funky version of Travolta's Saturday night disco fever complete with the finger pointing in the air. The silliness of it all brought a timid smile to the wretched Timelord's face.

"Hey!" Wilf commented, noticing the puzzled but amused look on the Master. "This used to be very hip when I was a lad."

Wilf would have continued his silly jig if it wasn't for the sudden ring of the doorbell. It stopped him dead in his track and sent the Master diving back underneath the desk.

"Hang on a minute!" Wilf heard Minnie shuffle in the hallway while whoever was at the door kept ringing the bell impatiently. "Yes yes, I'm coming!"

"Minnie! Don't open it! Don't go answer the door!" Wilf shouted up the staircase, but it was already too late.

_**TBC**_

_Next chapter will be posted on Saturday the 13th of March. Please review and comment if the story pleases you. It motivates me to continue._


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

**The Doctor versus mister Foks**

1.

Mister Foks arrived in the middle of the city of London, in clear daylight, underneath a nameless bridge with a platoon of Judoon soldiers. Being a man of discretion, at least more so than the company of men he currently found himself associated with, he would had preferred that they would have arrived under the cover of night, and in a less densely populated area, and with a less obvious alien entourage. Luckily, the place was a bit of a wasteland, with only a couple of homeless drunks moving about in the shadows; they were too intoxicated to take the ridiculous sight of a troop of heavily armed rhino-headed men too seriously. Still, this was hardly an intelligent way of running an investigation.

Mister Foks brushed the nanodust from his suit and ran his fingers through his slick black hair, which was combed back in a fashionable widows peak. No need to look unpresentable, even if he was currently finding himself in a smelly ditch. He turned and summoned his right hand officer to have a word.

"Mister Baines." Foks said while he fiddled with his silver cufflinks. "Tell me good sir. Do you actually understand the concept of _undercover_?"

Mister Baines, a Judoon officer who was about a head taller than the rest of the platoon, and who was in contrast to mister Foks, a man of little words and limited brain capacity, cocked his head to the site and shrugged.

"Ah, that could indeed complicate things." Foks sighed. "Now let me explain this in more simple terms." He gestured at the site. "Look around you mister Baines, and tell me, what's wrong with this picture?"

A silent shrug yet again.

"Nothing? You don't see anything remarkable? Like a bunch of rhino-faced alien soldiers marching around in broad daylight on a planet where the inhabitants have never so much as seen a Judoon before? You don't think that would arouse suspicion, or trigger a panic reaction? You don't think it would alarm their government to send their army on us. You don't –" Mister Foks paused for a moment. "That's the problem with you isn't mister Baines? You just don't _think_."

Mister Baines finally thought of something to say. "Ko, Lo, Wo, No, No, Zo?"

"Yes yes, I know." A vain smile crept over mister Foks' face. "I'm here to do the thinking for you. That's why the Shadow Proclamation hired me. I'm the man with the brains who guides the muscles."

"Ko, Jo, No, Go, Go, Go, Xo?"

"What we are going to do about it?" Mister Foks smiled. "Good question, mister Baines! Off course I have an idea. A simple one I must add. You could hardly call it a plan." He stepped up to mister Baines and stood on the tips of his expensive leather shoes in an effort to talk right into his face.

"Use your batons, you dummies. "That slap-happy police stick of yours contain more than only your favorite big red flashy button that goes bang-bang. It also happens to contain a very effective shimmer function. You and your men hardly use it, but it belongs to the force's standard equipment." Mister Foks stepped back from mister Baines. There was only that much Judoon morning breath a civilized person could tolerate. Mister Foks's his own breath smelled of mints. He clapped in his hands.

"So then mister Baines, let's shimmer!"

It took a while before the Judoons found the right button to push, but then the images of Baines and the other soldiers rippled in a blue flash of light, and they were transformed into a group of humans, four paramedics and four police officers. Mister Foks studied Baines' human face, a large head with a massive jaw supported on a thick neck. Two beady eyes stared back at him from underneath heavy Neanderthal-like brows.

"Ah, more muscle than brains. I think this suits you rather fittingly." Mister Foks smiled his automated smile. He fished out a white bracelet from his breast pocket. It was a thin little thing with a green flashing bar of light in the middle. Mister Foks held it in front of him like a compass, and as he slowly turned on his heels, the green light jumped up and down as the incoming signal fluctuated. He stopped turning when he was pointing in the direction of Brixton. Without looking at them, he addressed the Judoon troops.

"Shall we gentlemen? We've got a pressing task at hand. Let's track down our fugitive before he wrecks havoc on this planet."

2.

When Minnie answered the door, she was greeted by a handsome but rather stuffy young officer, who was accompanied by two heavily armed soldiers.

Minnie gasped and was about to slam the door shut when the officer stopped her.

"Ma'am, don't be frightened. We're army officers." He showed her his credentials. "I'm sorry to bother you, but we need to search your home."

"But, you can't." Minnie said, astonished. "No, I won't just let you into my house and-"

Without so much as an effort, officer Goodchild shoved the door wide open and let his men enter. Minnie was getting annoyed with these badly mannered brutes.

"Oh look at those muddy boots! They are ruining my carpet!"

"I'm very sorry ma'am." Officer Goodchild replied automatically.

"Oh what in the Lord's name are you searching for?"

"I cannot tell you ma'am, it's classified."

"What? Oh come on. You've entered my home without my consent and you won't even tell me why this is necessary?" Minnie shouted. It was loud enough for the two men down in the cellar to hear. "What kind of country is this turning into? It's like the Nazis all over again."

"We're not Nazis ma'am, I can assure you that." Officer Goodchild stepped away from her and entered the living room. "Anything?" He asked one of his men.

"Nothing sir."

The second officer came out of the kitchen. "Negative sir." He reported.

"Right, do a sweep upstairs. After that we move to the next."

The two men ran up the staircase, leaving Goodchild by himself. The officer went back into the hallway where Minnie was still waiting with her hands on her hips. Strangely, the expression on the old lady's face struck him as a bit nervous.

"Are you boys done yet?" Minnie asked, parking herself right in front of the door to the cellar.

Goodchild wasn't that easily tricked. "Almost. But tell me ma'am, what's behind that door?"

"What door dear?" Minnie asked, blinking her eyes.

Goodchild pointed it out to her.

"Oh that door! Yes. Uhm." Goodchild pushed her aside and opened it, revealing the staircase behind. "That would be the cellar." Minnie added, as calmly as she could muster. "You don't have to look down there. It's just old furniture and things. And it's a horrible mess."

"It's protocol ma'am." Goodchild said, and headed down the staircase, closely followed by an anxious Minnie.

"Oh really. There is nothing down here, and the light isn't working very well, you wouldn't see a thing." She objected. She sucked in a breath when the efficient officer switched on a searchlight that set the entire room ablaze. "What's that banging noise?" Goodchild remarked, and swept the bright beam over the stacks of boxes right towards a dark figure at the back.

Wilf was standing near the window, holding up a hammer and a piece of wood. "Ah Minnie, there you are." He said as casually and calmly as possible, while squinting his eyes against the harsh light. "Did you find the box of number nines? Seriously, I can't work with these, there just too small." He rattled with a box of nails.

"Sir?" Goodchild lowered the searchlight. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, that's just my good friend Wifred Mott, he's here to fix my broken window. Wilf, this officer came here to do a search of my house. I am not entirely sure what he's looking for, but hopefully he will be leaving as soon as he decides that he didn't find anything."

"Oh, really?"

"We've full authorization of the government to carry out this search." Goodchild justified.

"What are you guys looking for then?"

"I cannot tell you sir, it's classified."

"He said that to me too." Minnie complained.

"Well what kind of madness is that? You can't go marching into someone else's home like that and not even tell them the reason why you do this! Where do you think you are, Nazi Germany?" Wilf commented.

"Exactly." Minnie eyed accusingly at the young officer.

"We have good reason not to inform the public the purpose of our operation." Goodchild replied efficiently, but he was getting a tad nervous.

"See this?" Wilf rolled up his sleeve and showed him a long scar that ran right across his arm. "Got that from the war. At least our generation fought for our country! We pushed those Nazis all the way back to Germany. Nothing like you ponchies. Going into old people's houses and scaring the living daylight out of them. You lot should be ashamed of yourselves."

Goodchild was actually relieved when one of his men came at the top of the stairs to report back to him. "We searched the second level sir. It's clear."

"Right. Let's get out of here." He sighed, and rushed back up the stairs. "Sir, ma'am." He nodded politely at the seniors. "We apologize for causing you any inconvenience."

"And rightfully so!" Wilf shouted after them. "You call yourself an army officer? Go fight in a real war and then come back to tell me off, you snot-nosed toddler!"

"Alright, let me see you boys out." Minnie turned back to Wilf and mouthed a silent –_Stop it!_ – at him.

She came back after the soldiers had left. "Oh that was close. My poor heart, it's rattling like mad."

"You're all right luv?"

"Yes, yes, it's rather exciting, isn't it? I haven't felt so much alive since I came in a close second in that flower arrangement contest." She glanced around the cellar curiously. "Now then, where did you hide him?"

"He's just over here." Wilf removed a dust cloth and shoved some crates aside. The Master was all huddled up in a corner. A dark pool lay at his bare feet. When the white cloth brushed over it quickly became red. The stain bloomed out into a large crimson spot.

"Oh my lord, he's still bleeding." Minnie gasped. "He's bleeding quite a lot."

"It can't be from those shallow cuts." Wilf leaned closer to the Master who scrambled away from him. He grimaced when he pulled up his left leg behind him.

"It's all right, I am not going to hurt you. Let me see that."

Carefully he rolled up the Master's left trouser-leg. He hadn't notice it before because of the insufficient light in the cellar, but the entire thing was soaked in blood. The Master shivered in pain when he pulled the thick heavy fabric over his knee, revealing a hideous wound, a fleshy hole that dug right into bone.

"Oh that's looks terrible." Minnie uttered. "Oh you poor soul."

"No wonder he was crawling around. Must hurt like hell to try to stand on that."

"Let me go upstairs and get some bandages."

She returned with a first aid kit, and Wilf cleaned and dressed the wound. He also took a look at the cut in the Master's arm, but that seemed to be just a thin slash that had already started to heal in a neat red line. It struck Wilf as somewhat odd, since the blood on the sleeve would have suggested a far nastier wound.

Come to think of it, didn't the Master have a tiny red slash just right above his left eyebrow? Wilf studied the man's face, but he could no longer find it. It also seemed as if the cuts on his face weren't that many as he thought there were. Must be that he was getting used to it, Wilf reasoned. It's a bit like when you watch the news and get used to all that horrible stuff that's happening around the world. You just get indifferent towards these things. Besides, compared to the wound on the Master's leg, those tiny slashes indeed faded to nothing.

"We can't keep him down in the cellar." He said to Minnie. "It's damp and it's cold. It wouldn't do him any good in the current state he's in."

"We could try to get him upstairs. I have a spare room on the second floor."

Wilf shook his head. "He can't stay here Minnie. Those soldier lads might turn up again."

"Well, what are you suggesting then?"

"We could take him to my place."

"With Sylvia around? Oh no Wilf, that seems like a bad idea. She would go frantic."

"No, Sylvia is out of town this week. Went up north for a holiday with a friend of hers. And Donna is staying with Shaun in their flat this weekend. She wanted to do some redecorating, painting and stuff. So that would give me plenty of time to find the Doctor."

Minnie just stared at him.

"Well, it took us two hours tops the last time around. Now we've got at least till Monday if Donna doesn't show it for a surprise visit."

"But how do we get him there. He can hardly walk. And those soldier boys are still outside, searching through the entire street." Minnie asked.

"We have to get him out after they leave. As for the mobility problem." Wilf paused and gave it a thought. "We could call Winston, ask him to pick us up with his delivery van."

"Oh yes, that's a good idea. And- and maybe we could push him around." Minnie said in a flash enthusiasm.

"Ye- Uhm, what do you mean push?" Wilf asked.

"My late husband Phil, I used to take care of him at home. I've kept everything after he passed away. Silly of me of course, I know, but I just couldn't bring myself to return all that stuff. It reminded me too much of him. Anyway, Phil was bedridden, and I used to push him around in a wheelchair that I rented from the hospital to get us to the shops. That old thing should still be somewhere."

Minnie tapped her finger on her lips as she tried to recall where she had put it.

"I know it's down here. It should be somewhere in this junkyard. Ah!"

She walked to a corner of the cellar and pulled back a white dust cover, revealing a sturdy wheelchair underneath.

"Here it is! This should do nicely. Don't you think?" She asked enthusiastically.

3.

Mister Foks and his platoon passed right by the wreckage of the Judoon space ship, and went by the weeping angel of stone without so much as giving it a glance as he kept his eyes on the white tracker device. But when he finally reached the end of the street, he suddenly turned around and walked all the way back till he came to a halt right in front of the statue. He let the tracker slide back inside his breast pocket, and sniffed the air.

"Oh, I can smell Timelord blood." A sly smile ran across his lips. His canine teeth looked slightly too pointy to appear human. The others followed him across the street. Mister Foks carefully tracked down the bloody scent, till he reached the strange markings in the asphalt. He stepped into them, measuring the size of the footprints to his own.

"Technology is a good thing, but nothing beats good old fashioned animal instincts." He muttered and took another sniff of air. He raised his hand and beckoned the others.

"Gentlemen, this way please."

4.

"Is the coast clear?" Wilf asked nervously. His nerve endings were buzzing, and it was as if his legs had turned into highly strung coils. He was waiting in the hallway with the Master strapped down in the wheelchair. He had giving him a clean pair of dark blue pyjamas to wear, and had cleaned the grime from his face. At least he didn't look too much like a crash-site victim now, which was a big improvement.

Minnie swept a glance out of the door and into the street, where Winston was waiting in his van. He had set up a ramp to get the wheelchair easily into the back, and already had the engine running.

"I don't see anyone." Minnie answered.

"Here we go then!" Wilf let all of his nervous energy flow into his old limbs, and pushed the wheelchair with the Master out of the hallway, down the two steps of the porch, across the garden and right into the street.

Winston kept an eye on his back mirror for oncoming traffic. "Hurry up Wilf!" he waved at him from his rolled down side window.

Wilf pushed the Master up into the back of the van and quickly shut the doors.

"Made it!" He gasped, and removed his hat to wave some air into his face.

"God, you wouldn't say just by the look of him, but that lad weighs a ton."

Minnie stuck her head through the side window. "Is he all right?"

"I think so." Wilf checked on him. "Yeah he looks all right. Better than I do."

"Poor lad." She fussed as she looked at the Master. "I feel sorry for him. He reminds me of my younger cousin Frederick. He used to work in constructions and got hit in the head by a metal beam. He never was quite the same again. It was like the lights up there went out, all at once."

"Guys, we must really go now. There are cars approaching." Winston urged.

Minnie tapped on the side of the van. "Step on it Winston. You boys take care now." Winston drove off while Wilf watched from the back window how Minnie stood on the sidewalk, waving at them as they turned the corner.

"Let me know if I can be of any help." She shouted after them. She remained there, standing for a while in front of her house, and wished with her kind heart that it would all end well for that poor, confused young man.

5.

There was no-one home at the Noble's residence. No Donna, no Wilf, not even Sylvia. The Doctor peered through the back garden window into the kitchen. A half-finished breakfast, dirty dishes and what seemed to be a leaking dishwasher, but other than that the place was deserted. They must have gone out.

The Doctor turned and walked back, his hands tucked away inside the pockets of his long coat. Could it be, he wondered, that the Tardis had it wrong this time? He gazed around anxiously. The problem was that he could pick up his scent, but it was too faint to pinpoint out where he was. The Doctor sighed miserably, unsure how he could find him now, he finally stepped back inside the Tardis, and let the destination program run at random, limiting the possible destinations within 10 mile radius of Wessex Lane, while he kept his mind focused on the Master. The Tardis core whizzed into life and the blue police box disappeared from the street.

It was at that exact moment that Winston's van appeared around the corner.

6.

Something had changed. Mister Foks smelled the air again. He took out the tracker, and saw that the signal was fluctuating violently.

"It seems like our target has moved." He muttered. "But where to exactly…"

He held up the tracking device. For longer distances, he still needed it to show him the way. Together with his sensitive nose, he was about as efficient at hunting down his client's suspects as a price-winning bloodhound. "There!" He pointed. "Half a mile, down to the west."

7.

"What are you going to do with him?" Winston asked, as he was helping Wilf to get the Master inside the house. The old man still felt the chills run down his spine every time he looked into that man's face.

Wilf turned all the locks on the door behind him. Never before was he so relieved to come home.

"I'm going to look after him till the Doctor comes. Once he's here, he will take over. "

They rolled the wheelchair into the living room and parked the Master next to the couch. Wilf went up to the windows and shut the curtains.

"Are you sure you can handle him?" Winston asked worriedly. "I mean, all that stuff you told me of what happened in the Naismith Mansion, that was him right?"

"Yes it was." Wilf sank down into his comfy chair and stared at the Master. "And yet….It's strange but somehow he doesn't strike me as the same monster I've met when he was fighting the Doctor."

Winston looked at his old friend with a puzzled look on his face. "Oh come on Wilf. You didn't tie him down in that chair for nothing. It's been only two months ago. Even a juvenile delinquent needs more time than that to adjust to society. How can a man change that much within such a short time?"

"Well it's just my impression. I dunno." Wilf shrugged and shook his head while he rubbed his hands over his face. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for him, like Minnie, because he's in such a bad state."

"Do you still have your old service revolver?" Winston asked, with a serious expression on his face.

"What, do want me to try to shoot him again?"

"I'm not kidding Wilf. If he's really that dangerous you should arm yourself. Who knows what he will come up with to escape." Winston stared at the Master with a glint of fear in his eyes. "He might not be that dazed in that mad head of his as he appears. Maybe he's just pretending."

"Oh stop telling me ghost stories. You can't scare me, I'm staring one right into the face." Wilf muttered. "Now, stop worrying about me Winston and get the old boys' network working. Help me to find the Doctor. I need to get the Master back where he belongs, which is under the surveillance of the good Doctor, before Sylvia comes back. I don't want anyone of my family to see him."

Winston was about to leave when he turned to his old friend in the hallway. "You know, I know we've been best mates for a very long time, but I still don't get you. You tell me everything about these aliens, but you keep your mouth completely shut about it to your own family. Now, that you would like to keep Sylvia out of this I can quite understand. That woman won't believe in space men even when they landed right in her back garden, but Donna, she seems such an open-minded, clever girl. She should understand. Why not tell her? You used to tell her everything."

"Oh it's not like she wouldn't understand." Wilf became quiet. Sad memories rushed back into his mind, tearing open the old wounds. If only he could tell her about this. If only he could remind her of the Doctor.

"At least you would have somebody else with a driver's license at your disposal, and you wouldn't need me to chauffeur you around all the time." Winston joked.

"Ha, right." Wilf laughed, but his old heart was breaking. Still he kept a brave face. When Winston had finally left, he went back to the living room and sat down facing the Master.

"You're one lucky chap, you know that." He sighed. "You must be what? 900 years old now? Almost as old as the Doctor, am I right? And knowing how you were at the Naismith mansion, " He pointing with his index finger at the side of his head and made a circular motion. "You know, with those sounds inside your head turning you all crazy and murderous, you must have done so many things wrong in your life, hurt so many people. And yet, I suppose you can't remember any of them now. That's a blessing. At least for someone like you that is."

The Master bowed his head, unable to hold on to the old man's accusing gaze. There was no way that he could tell Wilf how wrong he was about him.

"I've got a granddaughter. Donna she is called. You spoke to her last Christmas. She was the one who rang me up on my mobile. She is absolutely wonderful. The kindest girl you'll ever meet. And she did these things, all these amazing things when she was traveling with the Doctor. He told me about it, what she did. She saved an entire race of aliens, freed them from human slavery, could you imagine that? She went to visit Agatha Christie! She saved Romans from the fires of Pompeii!" Wilf smiled while tears ran down his wilted cheeks. "My Donna! She made me so proud. She saved us all. Brought the Earth back to the rightful place in the sky. But she can't remember any of those wonderful things she did. She forgot about them, because of that Timelord meta-crisis thing. The Doctor wiped her mind to protect her. She isn't even allowed to remember any of it or she will just burn up and die. My poor, sweet Donna." Wilf wiped the tears from his face with the back of hand and sighed bitterly.

"And that makes her the most unluckiest person in the world."

He stared back at the Master who glanced ruefully at Wilf.

"I know." Wilf muttered, defeated. "I know what you're thinking. Life is just unfair, isn't? No one ever gets what they really deserve."

A silence fell between them. Two old men, pondering on the injustice of this world.

The front door suddenly slammed shut with a loud bang. It almost frightened Wilf into a heart attack.

Speak of the devil.

"Gramps! Are you home?" Donna's voice rang from the hallway. Wilf jumped out of his chair and started rushing around frantically.

"She can't! She can't see you! She will remember!" Wilf hissed, and pushed the Master from one corner of the room to the other in panic, spinning the wheelchair with such haste that he almost flipped him out of the seat.

"Gramps? Oh no, not one of her little notes again." Donna sighed. "Can't Mum just go on a holiday without leaving a dictionary worth of post-it signs all scattered around the house? The least she could do is allow us to take a holiday from her, and stop terrorizing us."

"Gramps?" She popped her head around the corner. "Here you are! I was looking for you." Wilf was standing like a stiff pole in front of the curtains that looked strangely bulky.

"What's the matter, you look like you've seen a ghost."

"Donna, my sweet." He clapped in his hands nervously. "I thought you were going to stay in your flat this weekend. Didn't you have a lot of redecorating to do?"

"Shaun said he could manage on his own. Besides, he was painting our bedroom with his mates. The entire places smells like toxic waste plant. It's giving me a headache."

She came over to her grandfather and kissed him on his cheeks.

"God you feel hot." She took a good look at him. "You're not coming down with the flu are you?"

"No, no. Fit as a fiddle." He knocked a few time on his chest to demonstrate. "I was just busy, doing some chores that you mother left me with."

"Oh sod her little notes. You've got the whole week for yourself. Do something with it. I swear if you don't do the hovering every day she wouldn't notice a thing. Same thing with watering the plants." By chance, she glanced over Wilf's shoulders.

"Hang on, what's that?"

Half a wheel of the Master's wheelchair peeked behind the curtains.

"Donna, luv, please don't!" Wilf tried, but before he could stop her, Donna had already stepped forward and pulled the drapes aside.

8.

"Second round, new changes!" The Doctor muttered and stormed out of the Tardis even before the sound of the engines had stopped. He was standing in the middle of a park on a wide stretch of lawn. About 50 meters away from him was a huge black crater. People were standing around it. Curious, the Doctor ran towards the site and stopped right in front of the weeping angel statue. All sorts of government officials were busy around the place. Medics, techs, the police, and if he was not mistaken, he also saw a good number of UNIT soldiers strutting about. When he was sure that no-one was looking, The Doctor ducked underneath the yellow police tape and went closer to the edge of the pit. Down below, a huge plastic tent shielded the space-vehicle from the prying public eye, but the Doctor didn't need to see it to know that it was the Judoon prison ship. What else could it be? Judging by the size of the crater, and the scorched earth around it, the impact must have been hellish, setting the entire thing ablaze. He glanced around worriedly. Then he spotted the black patch in the grass just underneath the statue.

Someone had managed to crawl out of the firery pit.

"Hey! You sir! What are you going there!" The Doctor turned, cocking an eyebrow as he watched how Captain Montgomery approached him over the lawn.

"I thought we have made it clear to everybody by now. Sir, you should stay behind the yellow line or we will arrest you!"

The Doctor crossed the yellow line back to the other side. "I'm sorry. Didn't know I wasn't supposed to. Really." He apologized. He had no time to get arrested. He needed to find the Master before those Judoon goons got their hands on him. Better to stay polite. "Huge crater you've got there! What happened?"

The stern expression on Montgomery's face softened when he came close enough to distinguish the features of the Doctor's face. "Wait a minute." He mumbled. "It's you!"

The Doctor scratched behind his ear in surprise. "I'm sorry?"

"It's you isn't it?" Montgomery's grey eyes suddenly flashed with excitement. "You're the legendary Doctor! Oh, sir! I've never dreamt I would meet you again!"

"I'm sorry, but uhm, have we met?"

The Captain's face became serious again as he sprang into a salute.

"Oh don't salute me." The Doctor muttered.

"Captain James D. Montgomery, sir." The Captain continued, keeping his spine as straight as a pole. "At your service! I was still a Lieutenant when you came to our rescue in that Atmos Factory."

"Oh yeah, the Sontarans!" The Doctor smiled as he remembered. "You were there with that lot?"

"I watched you at work in the UNIT field base camp. You were magnificent!"

"Yeah, I guess I was quite good." The Doctor agreed, rubbing the back of neck. "But I have to admit, I don't exactly remember you. Men in uniforms tend to have that effect on me, particularly when they are pulling ranks and waving their guns in my face. Anyway, now then _Captain_ Montgomery, since you are all in awe of me, could you please tell me what happened to the passengers on that spaceship down there? Did anyone of them survive the crash?"

The Captain was actually baffled that the Doctor had found out so much in such a short period of time.

"Uhm, I'm sorry sir, but that's classified information."

"Oh that's total bollocks!" The Doctor snapped. "You said you were at my service just a minute ago! Mind you, judging by the number of men you got running around this place, you could use a little help from someone like me. So help me out first by supplying the correct information, and then I could do something about your crisis at hand."

Montgomery thought it through for a moment. It seemed like an attractive bargain.

"Very well then Doctor. We found out that three Judoon soldiers had died during the crash, but the fourth passenger, a dangerous criminal of unknown race according the ship's log, managed to escape. We're still trying to find him."

The Doctor let go a visible sigh of relief. "That's all I wanted to hear. Thank you."

He turned on his heel and dashed back to the Tardis.

"Hey, where are you going? I thought you were going to help us to track him down? Doctor!

"Ha! Not a chance!" The Doctor shouted and rushed back inside the Tardis. "Very close, but not there yet!" He said to the Tardis and fired up the engines. "Let's see if round number three brings us the jackpot!" He pulled down a lever and activated the Tardis, letting the destination matrix once again spin at random.

9.

That face.

Donna clutched her forehead. There was something about that face of the man who was sitting there in a wheelchair that stirred her memories. Something important. Something wonderful and weird.

Something burning.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and it was gone. She opened her eyes again. Blinking, she stared down at the Master who was still hiding behind the curtains.

"Who are you?" She whispered.

"Donna, luv, are you all right?" Wilf asked worriedly. He grabbed her by the shoulders in case she would fall over.

Donna shook her head. "I'm fine. It's just. I dunno." She shrugged. "Must have been a blackout or something." She turned to her granddad with a puzzled look on her face.

"Gramps, who is this?" Donna asked, frowning.

"This, uhm, this is –" Wilf bit on his lower lip as tried to come up with a name. "Oh yes! I know! He's the grandson of Minnie Hooper. His name is Frederick." He sighed of relief while the Master glared at him with raised eyebrows. "Frederick Hooper, yes that's who he is." Wilf repeated, rubbing it in.

"Oh, so you're miss' Hooper's son. I'm Donna, pleased to meet you." She held out her hand, but the Master just stared at it with large unblinking eyes.

"Donna dear, come and have a word." Wilf ushered her away from the dazed young man.

"What the heck is wrong with him?" She asked, a bit irritated.

"Oh, don't mind him. He's a bit silly in the head, if you know what I mean." Her grandfather twirled a finger next to his temple in the universal gesture of mental incapacity.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Donna said. "I thought he was just rude. How silly of me. Is that why he's all strapped down in a wheelchair?"

"Yeah, something like that." Wilf pinched in his nose bridge. "Look, Minnie went out of town, and she couldn't take care of him, so I thought, since Sylvia wasn't here, I could keep an eye on him for her."

"I thought miss Hooper lives on her own? I didn't know she took care of her disabled grandson."

"Yeah, that's right. She does live alone. They've put poor Frederick in one of those institutes, a mental asylum? Terrible place. He's locked up all day in a tiny room with no windows. Only gets to get out to visit his granny once a month. She didn't want to leave him there. But she couldn't be here this weekend, so –"

"Oh that's really sweet of you gramps." She kissed Wilf on his forehead, and glanced over her shoulder at the Master. "Poor guy. He's still so young."

"Yeah, well. Bad things happen to good people." Wilf sighed, feeling very relieved that he got away with his made-up story.

His mobile phone went off inside his pocket. Wilf, having a pretty good idea who it could be, froze.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" Donna went over to the Master. "I bet you're sick of staring out into our front yard by now." She said, eager to be kind to him. "Do you want to watch some telly? We've got plenty of DVDs."

The mobile kept ringing.

"Gramps. Your phone." Donna urged.

"Oh, alright." Wilf sucked in a deep breath as he watched worriedly how Donna wheeled the Master to the shelves and started picking out DVDs for him. "Oh my Lord." He breathed softly. "Please let this not get out of hand."

Winston was on the other side of the line. "Wilf! Are you alright? You sound spooked. "

"Oh you've got no idea." He whispered, keeping an eye on Donna.

"We found him! We found the Doctor! It was good old Betty again. She saw the tall man from the blue police box, running down Warwick road heading south."

"Warwick Road, but that's just a few blocks away from here!"

"Exactly!" Winston urged. "So get down there before he disappears again."

"Yes! I mean, I can't." Wilf said, glancing up at his granddaughter. "I can't leave the house."

"Is that one of your mates?" Donna asked.

"Eh, yeah." Wilf muttered. "It's Winston. Just telling him that I can't get out of the house with Frederick here."

"Frederick? Who's Frederick?" Winston asked.

"If you would like to go down to the Lion for a drink with him it's fine. I could stay this afternoon to watch over him." Donna nodded at the Master who was studying the colorful covers of the DVD boxes with the single-mindedness of a cat pawing at a ball of wool.

"He's hardly what you would call a handful." Donna added.

"Wilf, I have no idea what you are doing, but you have to make up your mind. You have to hurry up!" Winston urged on the phone.

"Go on then. We two will manage." Donna encouraged.

"Uhm, alright. I'll get down to Warwick road. Thanks Winston." He hung up. "Are you sure you'll be alright?" Wilf asked.

"Sure. You have a bit of fun with your old pal. I'll just wait here till you get back."

"I'll be back. It won't take long. I promise. Just half an hour tops. You keep an eye on him." Wilf said while he grabbed his hat and headed out the front door.

"And don't leave him by his own!" Wilf shouted over his shoulder as he closed the door behind him. He left the house with a sick feeling of worry in the bottom of his stomach.

10.

The Doctor had been heading down Warwick road for a good 5 minutes now, stopping and sniffing the air in attempt to track down the Master, but he couldn't pick up a decent trail. Disappointed, he was already heading back to the Tardis when a man with very familiar face came rushing towards him. The Doctor lips pulled into a broad smile.

"Wilf!" He ran towards the senior. Wilf's face was horribly red and when he reached the Doctor while he kept wheezing like an old asthmatic camel.

"Doctor I'm so glad – I'm so glad you're here! The Master -"

"The Master? You saw him?" The Doctor grabbed Wilf by his shoulders and shook him impatiently. "What about the Master? Wilf speak up!"

"He's alright." Wilf huffed. "Found him in Minnie's house. Moved him to my place. He's alright."

A smile of relief broke through the Doctor's worried expression. "Oh that's wonderful! That's absolutely fantastic!" He breathed, feeling the weight lift from his shoulders. "I was so worried."

"He's with Donna."

"With- what? - with Donna?" The Doctor frowned while someone nasty dropped the weight right back on him again. "Why would you leave him with her?"

"There was no-one else. She kinda felt sorry for him and she insisted. Well you know how Donna is."

"We've got to get him away from her before she starts to remember anything." The Doctor said and started running back. He was followed by an exhausted Wilf.

"We're taking the Tardis! We've got no time to lose!'

11.

"Oh you should watch this, this is a good one." Donna laughed and popped another popcorn into her mouth. She was hanging on the couch in front of the telly with the Master parked next to her. The Master's face was drawn into a somewhat puzzled but amused look as he tried to make sense of the two white cartoon mice arguing on the screen.

"Look, that tall one with that silly smile and the red button nose is called Pinky, and that smaller one with the large head is called Brains." She munched down another handful. "So, they're Pinky and the Brain." She giggled. "Like in the opening song. Pinky and the Brain, Pinky and the Brain, one is a genius and the other one's insa-"

Donna abruptly stopped as he realized what she was actually saying to the poor man.

"Uhm, the other one's just a bit silly, that's all." She muttered apologetically. The Master had hardly noticed her correction. He was totally mesmerized by the little mouse that was now bouncing over the screen in a straightjacket.

Donna quickly turned off the DVD.

"Right. Are you hungry yet? Fancy something homemade and rather mushy?"

She got up and wheeled him into the kitchen. She pulled open the fridge and took out the entire stack of ready made meals that Sylvia had left behind, placing them on the kitchen table.

"Right, just nod when I pick up one you like. Capice?"

The Master gazed at the stack of plastic boxes with a puzzled look on his face.

"So we've got mushy peas and mushy stew for Friday." She glanced at the Master who showed a lack of response. "No? What about mushy fishpie for Thursday?" She waited, but once again, the Master didn't respond. "Not a winner either. Mash with bits of sausage for Tuesday. Gosh, I wish Mum would stop treating gramps and everyone else in this house like a toothless toddler. A little more fiber wouldn't kill us." She picked up one of the last boxes left on the pile. "Ah, however, may I advise you to take this one sir, the hotpot with lamb, originally destined for consumption on Wednesday. It's the only dinner we've got that isn't totally liquidized." Donna gazed expectantly at the Master who kept looking at her like she's just explained the rules of quantum physics to him, only now, he had the IQ equivalent to that of a three year old human toddler instead of a Timelord mastermind.

"Psst, you're supposed to nod now." Donna encouraged. "Don't worry, you're our guest. You should be allowed to get the first pick. I bet gramps wouldn't even hold it against you when you finish the lamb." She winked at him.

The Master frowned and shook his poor confused head.

Feeling sorry for him, she was just about to pop the lamb in the microwave and park him back in front of the telly with another cartoon when the doorbell rang.

"Oh. Just hang on to that thought for a minute." She smiled kindly at him. "Be right back."

Donna opened the door and found a rather strange group of men standing on the porch. The shortest one was of average height, and was dressed like a banker or a lawyer, the others were ridiculously tall and built like construction workers who had been forced into police officer's and paramedic's uniforms that were just one size too small. The Lawyer-banker guy smiled politely at her. It reminded Donna of the toothy canine grin of a fox.

"Good day to you miss." Mister Foks said.

"Yes hello." Donna put her hand on her side and waited, this should be interesting. "Can I help you?"

"I'm mister Foks. That's Foks with a K and a S. This here is officer Baines. We are conducting an enquiry in your neighborhood. May we come in?"

"You want to come in?" Donna looked puzzled. "You're with the police then?"

"Yes off course." Mister Foks answered, blinking his eyes innocently.

"Can you show me your credentials?"

"Show you my what?"

"Your credentials. Your ID card. That piece of paper that the police carries around for identification, something with your picture on it and your name, stating clearly that you're with the police." Donna said cleverly. She didn't know why, but somehow her instincts told her not to trust these odd looking guys.

"Oh, but we're officers. Didn't you see mister Baines's uniform?"

"Yes I noticed he was wearing one." Donna answered, crossing her arms over her chest. "Still..."

"But I can assure you miss, we really are working for this planet's law enforcement forces. Now, can you let us in?" Mister Foks urged.

"This planet's law enforcement forces?" Donna snorted. This was getting stranger by the minute. "No I am sorry, but I can't let you in. I can't let you into my mother's house without knowing for sure who the heck you guys are. What do you want anyway?"

"We're looking for a man." Mister Foks explained. He snapped his finger at mister Baines. "A fugitive, a deranged criminal who has escaped from the maximal security mental asylum only yesterday." Mister Baines thrust a crumbled sheet of paper into mister Foks' hands. Foks sighed and rolled his eyes at his officer. Carefully, he stroked the worst folds out of the paper before handing it over to Donna.

"He's highly unstable and dangerous. A madman suspected of murder."

Donna looked down at the paper. It said:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

Beneath that was a black and white photocopy picture of a man who looked like a more frightened and anxious version of Minnie Hooper's grandson Frederick who she had left behind in the kitchen.

Mister Foks studied Donna's face. "We're here to collect him and bring him back to the facility. He needs medication or he gets quite homicidal. Have you seen him miss?"

Donna locked a strand of red hair behind her ear. Her fingers trembled slightly.

"I'm sorry, but I've never seen him before." She glanced up at mister Foks, and handed the sheet of paper back to him.

Mister Foks' polite grin slowly drained from his face.

"Are you sure?" He informed in a sinister voice.

"Yes." Donna nodded, trying to keep a calm face while her heart picked up pace. "Doesn't ring a bell. Now if you would excuse me, I was rather busy."

She was about to slam the front door shut when mister Baines sprang forward and put his boot between the door, keeping it ajar.

"Ehm, I really would like you gents to go now." Donna urged and put her shoulder against the door, fear rising in her belly, but mister Baines was hardly impressed.

"He's inside." Mister Foks pointed his nose in the air and sniffed. "I can smell him."

"Leave my property immediately or I will be calling someone!" Donna panicked, certainly convinced now that she wasn't really dealing with government officials. "I will be calling the police! The proper ones!"

"Get him." Mister Foks ordered. With a loud grunt mister Baines thrust his full weight against the front door, dislodging the hinges and sending the entire wooden panel flying inward. The force of the impact hurled Donna into the hallway and landed her on the floor. Her head smashed against the lower steps of the staircase, propelling her into unconsciousness.

_**TBC**_

_Next chapter will be posted on Saturday the 20th of March. Please review and comment if the story pleases you. It motivates me to continue._


	3. Chapter 3

For those who have reviewed my previous chapters: thank you all for taking the time for doing this. It's much appreciated and very motivating.

**Chapter 3**

**Master Donna**

**1.**

When Donna opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw was how the officers and paramedics took the terrified young man outside to the street. There they cut the restraints from his wrists and ankles before picking him up from the wheelchair and dragging him to mister Foks. When he struggled, one of them hit him hard on the side of his head with the back of his baton.

"Gently mister Baines." Foks commanded, raising his chin up as he waited with his hands kept on his back. "We don't need to act like brutes here, even if we are one in your case. Remember, we need him alive to stand trial."

Donna was terrified. When the strange officers ran back into the house and came anywhere near her, she shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

"Bring him here mister Baines, let me take a look at him."

Mister Foks studied the wretched Timelord's face.

"The notorious Master. How strange it is to finally meet face to face." Mister Foks mused. "You have made quite a name for yourself sir. There are whole sections in the court's archives that are dedicated to you solely, all reporting on your numerous crimes. I studied them all, back when I was still a student at the university. My teachers didn't understand my fascination. With them being of Judoon origin, it wasn't quite surprising that the real genius of your work had eluded them. But I recognized it. I saw the raw and savage brilliance of your achievements." Foks leaned in on him, his hot breath smelled like mints. "I couldn't help myself. I became quite obsessed. You have _such_ an astounding immoral mind." Foks shook his head, his eyes carrying a strange glint of adoration. "You have committed such utter disturbed visions of felony and such thoroughly thought through nightmare offences. You sir, are a magnificent criminal masterpiece, a Shadow prosecutor's wet dream."

The Master stared back at him in silence with veiled and tired eyes.

"Or perhaps, I should say, you _had_ an astounding mind." Foks frowned. "I must admit that I'm somewhat feeling disappointed. You see, I had rehearsed this meeting with you, over and over again in my head, countless of times. I had expected myself to be overwhelmed by your intelligence. Left in awe by your sharp replies and cunning evasions. Instead, I'm looking down at a hollow shell, a shadow of the man you once were."

The Master lowered his head, and stared down at his dirty feet.

"Still, maybe I shouldn't be too hard on you. It's obvious that your mind is gone. After what had happened to you, I guess it was to be expected." The polite smile returned to mister Foks's face. The Master shrunk back when mister Foks stepped forward, his blue eyes shifting into a blood-drenched shade of red. A memory stirred inside the Master's quiet mind. A 2000 years old memory that had been once instilled into his brain by the Doctor's guardian angel, a vision of his possible future that was now turning into frightening reality.

Mister Foks's eyes were two burning spheres of cobalt, shimering in the dark, staring right into the Master's soul.

"Oh I can still see it in there, hiding so very quietly." Foks said in a low and dangerous voice. A sly smile appeared on his lips. "I can see your soul sir, and it's all intact. Even most of your memories are still in there, tucked away like precious gems, and so very lovingly restored. By the good Doctor perhaps? Was he the remarkable healer who performed this miracle on you?" Mesmerized by the burning embers in mister Fok's eyes, the Master hardly dared to blink. His body was frozen by an irrational fear that clutched onto his hearts with the cold dead hands of his numerous victims.

"You know, I'm glad he did." Mister Foks whispered. "This would make my upcoming task at the court of justice so much easier." His eyes slowly turned back to their normal color. He beckoned at mister Baines.

"Hook this monster up to the transmission line." He ordered, while he kept staring at the Master with a pitiless expression on his face. "Tell the others to clean up this mess." He gestured at the wrecked door and hallway of the Noble's residence. "And don't forget to wipe that bothersome woman's mind. I don't want us to leave a single trace."

Mister Baines dragged the Master away. Weakened after the expose to mister Foks's inquisition into his soul, the Master stumbled and fell to the ground. Mister Baines looked down at him without even so much as a trace of sympathy.

"Get up." He ordered.

The Master tried, but wasn't fast enough. Baines lashed out and bashed his baton down on his spine.

"Mister Baines!" Foks shouted, irritated once again by the mindless brute. "What are you doing? Stop that immediately!" He strode over to the Judoon officer. Baines turned and left the Master shivering on the pavement, gasping in red-hot agony.

Meanwhile, a Judoon medic went inside the house to find Donna, but she was no longer lying on the floor near the staircase. She had fled the house through the backdoor of the kitchen and was rushing down the alley in a state of panic. She only came to an abrupt halt near the corner of the junction. It suddenly occurred to her that she had been running the wrong way. She had been heading back towards Wessex lane, right where Foks and his men were. Frightened, she glanced around the corner. They didn't see her, but she did notice the Master, lying on the pavement only a few meters away from where Foks and Baines were standing.

Donna wanted to turn on her heels, but hesitated when she saw him slowly struggling to get up. She couldn't just leave him with those brutes. With fear in her heart and an agitated mind that wondered what the heck she was doing, she went over to the Master while mister Baines and mister Foks had their backs turned. Luckily, they were too busy arguing to notice her sneaking by.

"Please. Get up." She whispered urgently. She feared that he might not be able to stand up, but somehow, despite of the pain, he managed.

"Quickly. Come with me." She dragged the Master behind him as they ran back to the alley and disappeared around the corner.

Donna rushed down the narrow corridor with the Master limping by her side, leaning heavily on her, but getting quicker with each step.

"You're hurt." Donna breathed, noticing with alarm the spot of red on the fabric of his trousers that was gradually expanding over his left knee as he moved. "We can't outrun them, not like this."

Reaching the crossing with Garland road, she spotted the sign for a tube station. Donna took the Master's hand and led him towards the entrance.

**2.**

"Where is he? You idiots! I told you to link him up to the transmission line. How could you brain-dead morons let a prisoner who has a bloody leg injury escape?"

"You told me to have a word with you." Baines simply answered, failing to even notice that mister Foks was trying to shove the blame upon him.

"Sir, the redhead, she is gone too." The Judoon policeman reported.

Mister Foks, although usually a very restrained and composed man, was now quickly loosing his temper. Nostrils flaring, and with his hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist, he was about to hit Baines in the face. It was only that he stared at that impassive, almost robot-like expression on the Judoon soldier that he realized that his act of retaliation would probably hurt him more than it would mister Baines. He cooled down and composed himself.

"Sir?" Another officer reported.

"Yes?!" Foks hissed, with his eyes still fixed on Baines.

"Found him sir, they're heading down to the nearby tube station."

"Well. Don't just stand there, get him back!" Foks sneered.

**3.**

In the underground station, Donna, who was relieved to find for once, her commuter card tucked away inside her pocket, swiped it across the checking post and pushed the Master through the portal to get him in first. Then she glanced around, and after making sure that no-one would see her, she vaulted the barrier. They rushed down the escalator with Donna up front. The Master was now stumbling behind her, the leg injury was playing up, and the blood-soaked layers of bandages that Wilf had wrapped around his knee started to loosen and come off. Still he kept on going. They ran down the platform where rows of people were waiting for the incoming train. As they pushed further down the line, shouts coming from the back made Donna look over her shoulder. The Judoon policemen had followed them and were heading down, just when a train pulled into the station. The doors slid open. Donna moved the Master into the coach and shoved him down in front of the window seats to keep him out of sight. The other commuters who were already on the train, glanced down at the strange duo scrambling over the floor, but quickly averted their eyes when Donna glared up at them. As they waited for the doors to close, the first officer passed the door next to them. Seeing the reflection of the Judoon policeman in the glass panel, the Master let a go of a frightened whimper and scattered back till he bumped against the leg of a female office worker.

"Look at where you're going!" She complained and quickly moved away from him. She shot a demeaning glance at the cowering Master while she checked her tights for any stains.

"Oi! He's just scared!" Donna fumed, unable to control herself. "Never seen a disabled person before, have you? Why don't you just go point and laugh."

The woman blushed and looked away.

"There he is! He's on the train!" The Judoon officer waved his baton at them. Donna could slap herself, but just as their persecutor wanted to jump on the carriage, the doors closed.

The noise of the Judoon officer hammering on the mechanic doors frightened the Master so much that he coiled up and hid his face in Donna's lap with his hands pressed on his ears. Finally, the train started to move out of the station. The Judoon officer chased after it, pushing and shoving people aside till he ran out of platform and had to watch the train vanish inside the black tunnel.

Donna sank down with her back against the glass divider, trying to retrieve her calm. She glanced down at the terrified young man. "It's alright." She told him, and gently stroked his hair. "It alright now. They're gone. Whoever they are, they're gone."

The other commuters, having witnessed what appeared to be a policeman chasing down the odd couple, left in a hurry. They got off on the next station or moved to another section, leaving Donna and the Master in an almost empty carriage by the time they reached the first above ground stations.

To Donna, this was absolutely fine. She hadn't found back the strength in her legs yet to pick Frederick up from the floor anyway.

Glancing down at the man who she had just saved, she wondered why those horrid men were after him. When she looked in his eyes, she could not imagine that they were right about him. He couldn't really be that dangerous. Mad maybe, but a murderer? Besides, gramps would never lie to her, would he?

"Who are you?" She muttered. She noticed how he kept fiddling with something that was stuck around his left wrist. When she grabbed his hand and held it still for a moment, a white bracelet slipped down from under his sleeve.

Just when she was about to take a better look at it, the Master pulled away. He brought the wristband to his mouth and started biting on it, trying to rip it off like a dog chewing on a bothersome collar. Donna saw a small green light flashing in the middle of the bracelet.

"Oh this is getting way too weird." She sighed as the consequences of what she had done slowly hit her. "Look at me. What am I doing?" She rambled. "I just ran off with a madman. I mean no offence, but I hardly know you."

She clutched her forehead, and stared at the seemingly harmless blinking signal on the bracelet, but remained unaware of its function.

"And where am I going with you?" She mused. "I am certainly not going to take you to my flat. Shaun would think that I've lost my marbles. And I can't bring you back to Wessex Lane."

A thought hit her, sending her right back into panic mode. "Gramps. He's going to come back home with those violent maniacs still waiting at the door. I've got to warn him!"

She grabbed her mobile and dialed her grandfather's number. For a long time, the phone just rang without a reply, and she started to wonder if those men had already got to him.

"He doesn't pick up the phone." She said with tears shining behind her eyes.

The Master looked back at her with a morose expression on his face.

"Please gramps." She whispered. "Please."

**4.**

The Doctor was just about to slow down the Tardis for landing when he picked up the sound. He perked up his ears. "What's that?" He said and furrowed his brows while he looked around.

"I think it's me." Wilf said, and reached for his mobile. It was playing a jolly little jingle as he fished it out. "Someone's calling." He checked the display.

"Oh, it's Donna!" Wilf glanced up at the Doctor. "Can I answer it? I mean, with us traveling in the timevortex and all, I won't be calling her back in another 30 years or anything weird like that?"

"Well, there could be some delay." The Doctor answered, pleasantly surprised by the way Wilf's mind worked. "But only a minute or so, nothing too serious. Go ahead." The Doctor encouraged.

Wilf punched in a button. "Donna! Is that you?" He said with relief clearly sounding through his voice.

"Gramps! I thought they took you! Thank God you're still okay."

"What do you mean? Who are supposed to take me?"

"Those men, the ones who came at our door and demanded to take Frederick here back to some maximum security madhouse. They were dressed like the police, but they were so odd. I didn't trust them. I wouldn't let them in, and they just kicked in the door and dragged Minnie's grandson out into the street. They hit him gramps. They were hitting him like mad. What kind of horrid place did his parents sent him to?"

"Donna, are those men still there?" Wilf asked, alarmed.

"No, no, we ran away. Jumped on a train at the nearby tube station. I called because I was afraid you might run into them. They said he was a murderer." Donna glanced at the Master. "They were lying, right?" She whispered into the phone. "You didn't take in a homicidal maniac who has just escaped from an asylum, and I didn't just help him to get away, please tell me that."

"You did the right thing, sweetheart." Wilf answered, although he didn't know what to say about the homicidal maniac part. "I'm proud of you."

"Ask her where the train is heading. What is the next station?" The Doctor yelled from behind the controls.

"Is there someone with you gramps? Where are you exactly, there some very strange noises coming through." Donna asked worriedly.

"Uhm, Donna my sweet, tell me where you are. Tell me which station you are heading."

"I dunno. I just jumped on the first train that came in. But wait. Uhm." She looked up at the colorful map of the London tube system that was displayed above the doors and windows. "We've just passed Clapham South, so we must be on the Northern line. I think the next station is going to be Balham."

"It's Balham!" Wilf yelled back at the Doctor, raising his voice above the Tardis's engines while muting the speaker with his hand.

"Then Balham it is." The Doctor said determinedly, and steered the Tardis around. "Tell her to wait for you on the platform. We're heading their way."

"Donna, get off the train at Balham. Wait for me on the platform."

"What do mean? How do you get there? Gramps? Tell me where you are!"

"Don't tell her!" The Doctor shouted, as he fought the turbulence with both his hands on the steer. "Hang up Wilf."

"Donna, just wait for me there, sweetheart. I'll be there, I promise!"

"Gramps! Wait!"

With a pain in his heart, Wilf ended the call.

**5.**

"He hung up." Donna said, astonished. "He just hung up."

The train jolted as it slowly pulled into the next station. Donna stared out of the window and saw the sign for Balham pass by. She put away her phone. Her throat was dry of nervousness.

The doors opened to a platform that seemed deserted. No-one got on or left the train. The Master suddenly raised his head and sniffed the cool fresh air that drifted into the carriage. He recognized that scent. He crawled back up and stumbled towards the door.

"Hey, were are you going?" Donna said, heading after him.

The Master stepped out onto the platform, his feet breaking the thin layer of ice that had crusted on the stones. Squinting against the low afternoon sun, he looked around, searching for that one familiar face that he trusted. He found him standing at the far end of the platform near the staircase, next to the old man who had rescued him from the cellar. When they caught sight of the Master, they both headed straight towards him.

"Gramps?" Donna muttered as she recognized one of the two approaching men. "Gramps, is that you?" She was just about to step out of the carriage when a bright unnatural light burst into existence, followed by a distorting in the air that resembled the rippling motion of water when a stone was dropped into a pond.

She gasped when mister Foks and his followers appeared, right in front of her eyes as if by magic. The whole group was bathing in the afterglow of plasma light that had carried them all the way from Wessex Lane.

"How? How could you just turn up like that?" She stammered. Her head suddenly started to hurt.

Mister Foks looked up from his tracking device. This time, he had made good use of the technology at hand and the limited number of destinations of the London tube line to find the fugitive. Without so much as a glance at Donna, he pinned his eyes on the Master, snapped his fingers and pointed at his target.

"Get him."

Two Judoon officers rushed over and grabbed the Master by his shoulders and wrists, twisting his hands behind his back.

"Let go of him!" The Doctor yelled. He shot worried glances at Donna, who was swaying on her feet with her head clutched between her hands. "Wilf, get Donna out of here."

"Oh no, she's not going anywhere till we have wiped her head clean." Mister Foks said. Gesturing at mister Baines, the tall man stopped Wilf by grabbing him by his arm, preventing him from getting any closer to his granddaughter.

"What are you doing you swine?" Wilf shouted. "Let me through!"

Mister Foks stepped forward, facing the Doctor. "You must be the other remaining Timelord in existence. The Lady Architect informed me about you. The legendary _Doctor_. A name that is as illustrious as the Master's name is infamous."

"Leave my friend alone. The Master is my responsibility, not yours." The Doctor replied with a stern expression on his face.

"Your friend here is a dangerous criminal who is persecuted by the intergalactic court of the Shadow Proclamation." Mister Foks laughed. "You cannot claim responsibility over him. I'm here to apprehend the Master and bring him to justice. As for the human female –" He put his nose in the air and sniffed her scent. "There is something odd with the female." Mister Foks mused, heading over to her with his hands resting behind his back. "Keep an eye on the Doctor." He ordered, and two of his men immediately grabbed the Timelord, holding him back.

"No! She's got nothing to do with this!" The Doctor said with panic rising like bile in the back of throat. "She didn't commit any crime. In the name of Judoon Justice, I order you to leave her alone!"

"Oh, I'm convinced that she didn't commit any crime, but I'm just not so sure now about you Doctor."

Mister Foks leaned in on Donna, who was now propped against the side of the carriage in front of the entrance. Her long red hair was draped in clammy strands in front of her flushed face.

"Wha-What's happening?" She asked, her voice trembling and frail. "I can see, I can see these things, these creatures. It's so weird." She blinked her eyes as the forbidden memories rushed back to her. She gazed up, and stared at the Doctor. "You were there." She muttered, half-dazed by the pain. "I saw you. I…I remember you…"

"Donna, please, stop! Shut your eyes! Don't look at me!" The Doctor pleaded.

"Oh, why wouldn't she?" Mister Foks said with a righteous flush burning on his cheeks. "She is, after all, your creation. A frail female of the human race caught in a Timelord metacrisis, an abomination that goes against all the unwritten laws of the universe. You know as well as I do that she shouldn't be allowed to exist."

"Hey! Who are you calling an abomination? Have you recently taken a good look at yourself you little shit?!" Wilf fumed.

"Remember to wipe that old man's head after we're done here, mister Baines."

Mister Foks ordered without taking his eyes off Donna.

"She is burning up, Doctor. She won't last long if she keeps looking at you, but she can't help herself, can she?" A cruel smile played on his lips when he noticed the horror on the Doctor's face.

"It wasn't her fault. She didn't want to, she didn't ask to become part Timelord and part human. Please, let it stop." The Doctor begged. _Oh please, let it stop._

He glanced at the Master who was standing the closest to Donna.

_Master, if you can hear me. Don't let him do this to her. Please, please help her._

The Master shook his head and stared at the Doctor in desperation. His mind damaged and frozen, he was unable to think of any possible way that he could be of any help.

_The train_. The Doctor answered. _It's leaving._ _Get her back on the train_.

Mister Foks, who was unaware of the Doctor's telepathic connection with his prisoner, studied Donna's agony with as much empathy as an average tax-collector would have for someone who had committed fraud.

"Such an agonizing slow death." He considered, and crossed his arms over his chest. "Perhaps I should hurry it up a little, just for efficiency's sake."

He gazed into Donna's eyes. His pupils changed into the color of dark wine. They glistened lazily like hot lumps of coal. His penetrative gaze made her rock unsteadily on her feet. It made the strange and fearful images come into her mind more violently, the Daleks, the Oods, the Vespimorph, all rushing back and clouding her head that started to burn with a dangerously high fever.

"Stop it! Stop it immediately!" The Doctor yelled and struggled against the Judoon soldiers. "YOU'RE KILLING HER!"

"DONNA! Stop it! Stop it you swine!" Wilf cried.

"Just cleaning after you, my dear Doctor." Mister Foks said in a matter of fact voice.

The doors of the train started to close. It was right in that moment that the Master managed to struggle free from one of the soldiers. He swirled around and with a precision of aim that astounded both Wilf and the Doctor, he punched the Judoon right in his left eye socket, sending him reeling away from him. The second soldier grabbed his baton and swung out, but the Master ducked down and dashed to mister Foks, ramming his shoulder into his back. The impact sent the Shadow prosecutor tottering backwards. He collided into Donna. She fell right through the closing entrance into the carriage, just a split second before the doors were completely closed.

The train started to move out of the station. Wilf and the Doctor watched with relief and worry in their hearts how Donna scrambled back up from the floor, shaking her head as she headed back towards the windows. Seeing her grandfather standing on the platform, she banged on the doors and called out to him.

Then the train disappeared out of sight.

"She will be alright. Don't worry." The Doctor muttered, noticing how upset Wilf' was. "He didn't get to her. Soon she will fall asleep and forget about all this. She will forget that she has ever seen me."

_And thank you._ He told the Master with sincerity and gratitude in his eyes. _Thank you for saving her._

"Mister Baines." Mister Foks called, scrambling up from the platform with the corners of his mouth turned down in extreme displeasure. "Take these Timelord goons into custody. And this time, make sure that you hook them up on the transmission line_ first_ before you start swinging your fists at them."

He stood up straight, tidied his collar and brushed the dust from his suit. When the Judoons dragged the Master away he gestured them to halt.

"I'll make an exception for this one." He punched the Timelord hard in the solar plexus, making him bend double in pain.

"Hey! Keep your hands off him!" The Doctor yelled while the soldiers hooked a transmission belt around his waist. Mister Foks was hardly daunted by the Doctor's protests. He readjusted his cuffs and snapped his fingers. The Judoons fastened a similar belt around the Master's waist.

"Do you want us to leave the human behind?" Baines asked.

Foks glanced at Wilf for a second or so.

"No, take him with us." He ordered. His mind was already working on the case ahead with lawyer-like efficiency. "I may be able to use him later on."

"Hey! What are you doing?!" Wilf protested when the Judoons fastened the transmission belt on him. "What's that thing you've put around my middle? What's it for?"

Mister Foks completely ignored Wilf. "Gentlemen, using this term loosely. I think we're ready to return to the fleet and report to her Lady Architect." He took out the tracker and hooked it up to his own transmission belt. "On the count of three. One, two and – start transportation."

"Oh my- " Wilf muttered, but before he could finish his sentence, his physical form vanished from the station.

**6.**

The Doctor and Wilf were locked inside a cell on board of one of the Judoon's spaceships. As soon as the soldiers left, the Doctor started pacing around impatiently in front of the bars like a caged lion, anxious to get out.

"You can't do this!" He yelled, and slammed his hands flat against the bars. "In the name of the Shadow Proclamation, I demand to speak to someone in higher authority!"

"As long as you at it, you might as well ask for our phone call as well." Wilf muttered and sank down on the narrow cot. "Those bastards took my mobile. There's no way I can call back to Donna now to check whether she's alright." He added worriedly.

The Doctor sat down next to Wilf. " Don't worry. She's fine. They won't come after her."

"How come you're so sure?"

"Too much paperwork." The Doctor explained and gazed at Wilf. "Before they can take anyone from the registered races into custody, they need to have the right papers ready to make an arrest. With something as complicated as a metacrisis charge, it would take ages before they get the warrant ready. By that time, Donna has probably already died of old age."

"Hah! That's bureaucrats for you. They're the same everywhere, aren't they?" Wilf laughed, rather joylessly. He was still apprehensive but the Doctor's explanation seemed to lift some of the weight from his shoulders. "What about us?"

"We should be alright." The Doctor sighed. "They have nothing against you, obviously. And the only thing that I can think of right now that could do me any harm is probably the huge amount of parking tickets that I've failed to pay up for the last hundred years or so." He rubbed in his eyes tiredly.

"Parking tickets?"

"Oh, you'll be amazed how many places in the universe are designated no-parking zones. At least I manage to land in each and every single one of them with the Tardis every time."

"And what about the Master?"

The Doctor remained silent for a while, and stared ahead with a morose expression on his face.

"Huh, that bad hey?"

He looked back at Wilf, his hands folded in front of him with the tips of his fingers resting on his lips.

"Tell me Doctor, these rhino-aliens, what do you call them? Judoons? If they are really what you've told me, some sort of space police who guard the law and peace in the known galaxies, why is it then such a bad thing that they have finally caught the Master? It sounds like that they are the good guys, just doing their job, and the Master, well he doesn't exactly have a clean slate, does he?"

"You're telling me that he deserves to be punished for his crimes, is that it?"

"Yes." Wilf thought about it for a moment. "I guess so. Shouldn't we all when we commit a crime?"

The Doctor shook his head and laughed bitterly. "If the Master was forced to pay up for all the things that he did done wrong in his life, he will probably have to die a hundred times to make amends. You only saw him at the end, back in the Naismith mansion, I was there to prevent most of the damage that he otherwise would have done. You haven't even seen him at his worst." He stared back at Wilf with a haunted look in his eyes.

"The Master, he had murdered millions. He had killed without remorse, even those who were the closest to him." The Doctor paused, feeling the darkness that he had witnessed inside the Master's mind, rising inside him, like a cold draft of stale air from a underground tomb from which the slate had been lifted.

"There was no end to his madness and his cruelty." He added softly.

"But if that's true, why are you still defending him?" Wilf asked. "I don't understand you Doctor. You're the most righteous man I've ever met, and still, you keep choosing the side of that little monster. Why do you keep doing that?"

"You can't judge him like that." The Doctor muttered, and covered his face with his hands. "You've never seen him before all this, you don't know how he could have been. I have Wilf." He stared right into the old man's eyes, begging him to understand. "I knew him. I knew how he was before all of this madness started. It wasn't entirely his fault."

Wilf slowly realized that the Doctor was somehow feeling responsible for the Master's fate, and was seeking penance for failing him in a way that Wilf could never grasp. He cleared his throat and decided in his down-to-earth wisdom, not to question the good Doctor about his motives again.

"So, what would happen to him now?"

The Doctor lifted his hands and stared at the pipes that ran across the ceiling. "They will put him on trail in the Judoon justice court. If he is to be found guilty by the Judges of the Shadow Proclamation, he will probably be executed for his crimes."

Wilf pondered over this for a moment. "Back at the mansion at Christmas, you couldn't kill him. You couldn't kill the Master, even when your very life depended on it." Wilf gave the Doctor a meaningful look. "I guess you wouldn't let those Judoon soldiers kill him now."

The Doctor shook his head slowly. His head was filled with gloomy thoughts.

"Are you sure that he doesn't stand a chance? I mean, don't they need to gather evidence to built up the case? Get all the witnesses here to support their accusations? This could take years, right? Like you said, masses of paperwork to be done before it can even start. In the meantime, you could easily think of something to get him out. You've always got a trick or two kept under your sleeves. Isn't that right, Doctor?"

"That's not how the Judoon Justice system works." The Doctor answered in a soft voice.

"What do you mean? I know it's supposed to be different with them being aliens and all, but they still call it a court. You still need to provide evidence to push in the charges. Am I right?"

"They don't need to gather any evidence, and they don't need to find any witnesses. They don't operate like that. All they need is the accused, his memories, and his sense of guilt."

"I don't think I can follow you, Doctor." Wilf muttered.

The Doctor sighed. "The judges of the trail can come to a verdict, simply by judging the criminal by what he remembers of the crimes that he has committed. They can judge him on his conscience. They might not need to use anything else. It's not exactly like that, but something like that."

"Well then, the problem is solved! The Master will be found not guilty for sure. They can't convict him. Not now he can't remember a single thing of what he had done. And as for a conscience, I'm in serious doubt if the Master ever had one."

The Doctor stared quietly ahead.

"Doctor? He can't, can he?"

Sadly, the Doctor shook his head.

Wilf rubbed his eyes. "Maybe it's time that you tell me exactly what happened to the both of you in those two short months that you went looking for him. This is getting too much. I don't understand anyone of you."

It was hard for the Doctor to speak about the Master. With everything that had happened between them, how would he ever be able to describe accurately, in mere simple words of any language, what he really felt? But the Doctor also wanted someone to understand. He desperately needed someone to know, why he was doing all this, why he felt responsible for the Master's life, and why deep in his hearts, he still blamed himself for everything that had happened to his friend from the day he ran away from the Academy.

"For starters, it wasn't just a couple months for me." The Doctor began. "It was more like decades." The Doctor gazed at Wilf's astounded face. "Oh yes, Wilfred Mott." The Doctor said with a little smile. "It's been more than twenty years since I last said goodbye to you in front of your house on Wessex Lane. But that's time travel for you."

"Twenty years? I can't believe it!" Wilf shook his head in amazement. "Where have you been all that time?"

"I was with the Master, trying to keep him from slipping away from me. It took me twenty years to get him back, bring him to some sort of conscious state. If you think he looks bad now, you should have seen him when I first found him, back on that doomed planet, locked away in the dark tower." The Doctor paused for a short moment, seeing it all again in his mind's eye, the black planet with the red sky, the miserable, unworthy remains of what once was Gallifrey.

When he finally continued, Wilf listened, and slowly but gradually, the old man finally started to understand the many ghosts that haunted the Doctor's mind.

**7.**

The Judoon soldier who entered his cell carried a long pole with a metal grabber at the end that looked like a rusty collar. The Master was alarmed and glared restlessly from underneath the narrow cot where he was hiding.

"Xo, so, zo, ro, so!" The soldier ordered, but off course he couldn't do as he was told. Not only was he far too frightened, he also had forgotten every single word of the Judoon language that he had once spoken fluently. Without wasting another breath on the prisoner, the soldier used the metal grabber to seize him, and he felt the metal grabber snap shut around his neck before he was dragged out of his hiding place like a disobedient dog. Half-choking on the collar, the Master stumbled after the Judoon, trying to keep off the weight on his injured leg that had finally started to heal. He was led down into a confusing maze of corridors before they entered a small chamber with tilted walls. Every surface of the room's interior was covered by large shards of crystals, polished up till they shone like mirrors. In the middle of the room was a high chair, bolted to the floor. The Judoon pushed him into it. When the Master resisted, he beat him mercilessly on his injured leg, leaving him howling in pain. The Judoon then continued dutifully by disconnecting the pole, but left the collar on the prisoner, and clicked the metal cuffs on the arms and legs shut around his wrists and ankles. Lifting his pain-dazed head, the Master saw how the sharp white light from the ceiling was caught by the mirror-like shards in the walls, and was dissected it into all the different colors imaginable.

The Judoon pushed down a lever, activating a strong magnet at the back of the chair. The Master's head was forced back as the metal collar connected with the magnet, fixing his head on the spot. He couldn't turn or look away from the crystals.

"Jo, ko, wo, xo, xo, do!"

The Master stared back at him with frightened, white rimmed eyes.

When the soldier left the room, the Master caught his own pitiful reflection in the shards. He saw a trembling young man, mad with fear, who strained the bonds on his chest with every ragged breath of air that he sucked down through his mouth.

The room started to spin, slow at first, but picking up speed till the individual shards disappeared into one blurry flash of harsh light. It was as if he was stuck in the middle of a demented merry go round, with him the unmoving center point. Struck by nausea, the Master wanted to shut his eyes, but was prevented to do so. Something was forcing him to look ahead. Images appeared in the mirroring shards as human shadows cleared from the light, moving like jerking marionette dolls on tangled strings. They came closer, and closer, till their faces finally came out of the shadow and became recognizable to the terrified Timelord. They were the faces from his nightmare hallucinations. In the light of the claustrophobic chamber, the color of their skin continuously shifted from corpse blue, to gangrene green, to blood crimson. The Master, strapped down in his chair, watched helplessly how they approached while his limbs jerked and shuddered against the restrains.

One by one, the ghostly figures stepped out of the mirroring surfaces in spasmodic motions. They opened their dark mouths, hungry for justice and screaming for blood.

The Master looked into their hollow, fury-filled eyes, and losing his last grip on reality, screamed back at them insanely.

**8.**

She came to him as if in a dream. Her face white and luminous, like a deep-sea pearl. Her gown black, like the sky at midnight.

"Why do you keep defending him?" She spoke the question with a quietness and serenity that suited her wisdom and age, but it also carried a touch of childlike curiosity, as if she was trying to learn.

The Doctor sat on the floor with his back against the wall facing the bars. He glanced up at the Lady Architect who had appeared in front of the cell. The lights were out, and Wilf lay fast asleep on the cot next to him. Although the Doctor had confronted her before, and had been able to face her unyielding pursuit for justice without giving in, he knew he wouldn't be able to evade her inquisitions now. When the Lady Shadow Architect looked into your eyes and asked you a question, there was no possible way for you to lie. Her gaze looked right into your soul and demanded the raw and straightforward truth, however painful. Even a 900 old Timelord couldn't prevent her from extracting the most honest answers from his fortified hearts.

"Because…he has changed." He replied truthfully, in a soft voice.

She shook her head slowly. "That cannot be the only reason."

The Lady Architect crouched down in front of the Doctor's cell. The fabric of her dark gown rustled like the dead leaves on tired autumn branches. She stared at him with questioning eyes.

"Like you, I've lived a very long life. I've seen people appear at court, whose hearts were set out to defend the worst kind of monsters. Tyrants, war criminals, murderers. They protected them, because they could still see some good left in them. They believed that the criminals themselves have become conscience-stricken and have changed for the better."

"Oh, but he has changed. I know he has. Please my Lady, the Master has already suffered so much, you might not know it, but he has. You have to be lenient. You have to be, because…"

"Why Doctor?"

Because…I've failed him."

"Others have pleaded with me, burdened by their guilt of how they have never been able to prevent that what had happened in the past. They come to court with a deep-rooted belief in their hearts that they are somehow responsible for how fate had shaped their loved-ones into the dark twisted souls that they have become."

The Lady Architect slipped her hand between the bars and gently caressed the Doctor's face.

"I believe I can recognize those noble same motives in you, my good Doctor. But there is still more."

He turned away from her touch, and stared silently ahead.

"What is the real reason for you to keep defending him, Doctor?"

"Because…Because I know that it could have been me." The words came out in one ragged breath. "We were the two last Timelords in the existence who were not locked inside the Timewar. Rassilon and the elders, they needed a link to escape, they could have placed those cursed drums in either one of us, but they chose the Master. It had cost him everything." The Doctor explained, his most, deep-felt confession of the heart finally poured out of him like a strong river current that breached the shores. "His sanity, his family, his life, everything he once believed in, everything he once stood for was destroyed in that one brief moment in front of the Untempered Schism."

The Lady Architect slowly shook her head. "My dear Doctor, that was a fixed point in time. It was an event that could not have turned out differently. The choice would have always been the Master, because it was you, who sealed the Timelords inside the lock and ended the Timewar. They could never have chosen you."

"I know." The Doctor wiped the tears from his eyes. "It's paradox, a hideous and cruel contradiction in cause and result. But somehow, this paradox had to be created in the first place, and there was a moment in the beginning, in which there wasn't a conscious choice. We both had equal chances. Rassilon might as well have just tossed up a coin to decide." The Doctor forced back his tears. "Head or tails, tell me oh pitiless merciless fate, who shall it be?" The Doctor smiled bitterly. "It could have been me, but in the end, it was his life that was ruined."

"And you feel responsible for that?"

"What if I tell you that I've known him from before any of this madness had affected him? That I've once stared my young friend in the eyes, that determined eight-year old boy with his head filled with great dreams and his hearts bursting with love, and had known for certain that he would grow up to become a magnificent Timelord? Would you then understand? Would you then know the full extent of my guilt?"

The Doctor glanced back at her, his eyes shining with remorse.

"He could have become anything or anyone, he could have become the Doctor, and I could have become the Master. It was me who has prevented that. I realized this after I found out the truth behind the drums. That's why I still defend him. That's why I can't let you judge him on his crimes. Because you'll be judging me as well."

Taken by the Doctor's confession, the Lady Architect slowly rose back on her feet.

"These are not rational arguments, Doctor."

"I'm not pleading to the rational mind, my Lady. I'm begging you for your compassion."

Her eyes lingered on him for a moment. Without another word, she turned away from him, and disappeared, as if she was dissolved in the darkness in the waking hours after a deep sleep.

**_TBC_**

**_The fourth and final chapter will be posted on Saturday the 27th of March. Please review and comment if the story pleases you. It motivates me to continue._**


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you all so much for reviewing this story. A lot of work went into it, so it's good to see that it's appreciated. Special thanks goes to Edzel2, who is tireless in her efforts to keep the odd spelling and grammar mistakes out of each post. A big hug and many thanks Edzel2!

Chapter 4

1.

_It's very quiet now. There is only the sound of the Tardis. Her calm, regular breathing as she sleeps her dreamless sleep. Outside these four wooden walls, the universe toils on, worlds are created and lost, civilizations rise and fall, lives start and end. But here inside the Tardis, time is sealed inside a vacuum, creating a place of stagnation, a micro-cosmos in hibernation. In here, there is only a dying Timelord, locked away in his dusty past, while it is slowly being forgotten by the present. _

_I close my eyes for a moment. I'm holding my body so very still that the Tardis might think that I've fallen asleep, but I'm actually trying to recall the events that have shaped my life. Allowing my mind's eye to take the journey back into my past, I can once again see that peculiar courtroom in the heart of a London cathedral. I remember the righteous Judoons and the cunning mister Foks. I can see Wilfred Mott and the Ladies Shadow Architect, a wise and ancient soul split in three entities who are about to judge the crimes committed by a sinful and deranged Timelord. And I remember the endless rows of victims who are waiting in the benches. Each one of them is a haunting face that represents a violent and unnecessary death. _

_He didn't know. He had never found out afterwards, but I've kept something from the trial. It's a silver globe, inscribed with one of the accusations. There had been many, with each of the globes representing the ruthless crimes that were committed. Together they had burdened the conscience of the accused. _

_In the end, it had sealed his fate._

_You shall not steal. And yet you've stolen._

_You shall not commit violence. And yet you've attacked those who were innocent._

_You shall terrorize none. And yet you've threatened many. _

_You shall not slain men and women. And yet you've murdered. _

_You've murdered. _

_You've killed so many._

_I shook my head to clear it from these pitiless thoughts. Where is your story, old man? Can't you finish anything nowadays? Your mind is slipping. You're being distracted by the darkness that soon will come to reclaim your soul. Didn't you promise, a long time ago, to tell it exactly as it happened? No rhymes, no embellishments, no justifications._

_And please…no self-pity. _

_After all these years, after all what you have done to make amends, Why is it still so hard to tell the truth?_

_I let the silver globe roll in the palm of my hand. The green glow of the heart of the Tardis reflects in its smooth surface, making the metal shine. Slowly, my memory of that day returns, wading through layers of darkness, it surfaces like a string of bubbles from the deep. _

_I wonder, not without remorse, whose ruined life it is that I hold in my hand._

2.

It was hard for Wilf to tell how long they've been kept inside the tiny cell. He woke up after what seemed to have been a long period of sleep, and found the Doctor already awake, standing in front of the bars and staring silently into the corridor. Two Judoon soldiers marched by, just when Wilf rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"Yo, Jo, Ko, Ko, Mo, Zo!"

"Huh, what? What's happening?" Wilf asked as they open the cell door and entered.

"They are taking us to the Shadow court." Doctor said with a grim expression on his face.

One of the soldiers cuffed their hands behind their back. Then both the Doctor and Wilf were moved out of tiny chamber and taken down the corridor.

"Wo, Ko, Zo, Zo, Do."

"What does he say?"

"That the cuffs are standard procedure. Once in the court room they will be removed. We're not considered prisoners." The Doctor explained. "But we're expected to stand as witnesses to the Master's crimes."

"But that means we can be offer him some help, right? Well, at least we can lie."

"They won't allow us to lie."

"What, they make us swear on their alien bible?" Wilf joked.

"No, it's just impossible to tell a lie when you're facing the jury of judges."

The soldiers guided them down a narrow tunnel that ended into a small vaulted room.

"Is this the court?" Wilf asked, unsure what to expect from these aliens.

"It's just a transport portal. The court room isn't onboard of this ship. The Shadow court is a moving court. It travels with the Shadow fleet from galaxy to galaxy. The court could be anywhere in the nearby solar systems. We're going to be teleported over there."

"Oh no, not those things again." Wilf muttered when the soldiers hooked him up to a transmission belt. "I was nauseous last time they beamed us up here."

The Doctor raised his hands up and let the Judoon connect him to console. When they were ready, one of the soldiers hit the big red button on his belt and initiated the teleportation.

Bright plasma light engulfed the chamber, and Wilf felt a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, just like the last time. It was followed by the loss of solid ground under his feet and a drifting sensation of weightlessness. Curious, Wilf wondered if, when he opened his eyes, he would still find his limbs attached to his torso, or whether he was now just a cloud of atoms being beamed through space to their secret destination.

Before he could muster enough courage to take a peek, he felt the comforting re-stabilization of gravity, followed by a very unpleasant jolt that played havoc on his poor stomach.

Fighting the dizziness, Wilf slowly opened his eyes again.

He gazed around while the last of the plasma light slowly died down. They were standing inside a huge gothic chapel, a magnificent high-vaulted building that was laid-out in a cross-shape. Heavenly light poured in through the large glass-painted windows and threw color-rich patterns on the white marble floor.

"Hang on." He muttered, while the soldiers guided him and the Doctor down the nave, passing by the rows of cherry wood benches. "This can't be somewhere on a different planet." He stared up at the ceiling, which raised at least seven levels up in the air. "I know this place."

"Oh, you've been to Westminster Abbey then?" The Doctor said absentmindedly. He was busy counting the large number of armed Judoon soldiers who were standing guard in the two arcades that flanked the central hall.

"Is this what it is then? Westminster Abbey?" Wilf asked. "No wonder I recognize it. I'm not one for churches though. Too cold, but I've seen this on the telly with the service last Christmas. Why are we here? I though we were supposed to go to court?"

They had reached the quire, a short space between the central high altar and the nave where the choirboys sit during service on the two rows of wooden benches. The Judoon soldiers halted. They removed the Doctor's and Wilf's handcuffs and gestured with their guns that they should sit down. They did what they were told.

"This is it, this is the court." The Doctor explained. "Like I said, it is a moving court. The Shadow Proclamation does not have headquarters of operation. They move to where the crime needs to be judged, and borrow places on nearby planets for that purpose."

"But won't people notice?" Wilf said in astonishment as he watched a man-sized droid roll down the aisle on its four wheels. It was carrying scrolls of paper and a leather briefcase underneath each mechanical arm. When it dropped a scroll accidentally, it went in reverse and drove backwards to retrieve it. As the droid bowed forward to pick up the scroll, a number of silver balls the size of small apples spilled out of the briefcase and rolled underneath the benches. Showing some artificial form of distress, the diligent android went after them.

"Aren't they afraid that the dean could walk in on this? Or people who might come in for service, or tourists?" Wilf mentioned, struck by the weirdness of the situation.

"That won't happen." The Doctor said. "The Judoons have isolated this abbey. Placed it just a second later or earlier out of time. In other words, nobody will notice that this place has been hijacked to run a Judoon justice court, because it happens before or after anyone on Earth enters this particular church."

Wilf watched with fascination how a group of Judoons emerged from the arcades, wheeling in a large construction and placing it at the right side of the high altar. It looked like an old fashioned beam-balance with a gilded frame and horizontal lever. Large copper pans were suspended from chains from each end. Then he glanced back into the nave and saw that some of the rows were filled with men and women.

"Right." Wilf mumbled. "And who are these folks then? Are they also aliens? They look pretty human to me."

Doctor stared at them. "They're not human." He said with a burdened voice. "At least not anymore."

"What are they then?"

"Court ghosts."

"T-they're g-ghosts?' Wilf stammered. "What are they doing here?"

"They're not real ghosts. Just electronic visualizations of the imprints they've left behind after they've died. They were the Master's victims. Summoned from his memories to testify as witnesses against him."

"But…there are so many."

The Doctor stared at those empty faces, and recognized Lucy, Chanto, Ravenius, and Redgrave and many others. They stared back at him with eyes that were dull and lifeless like marbles.

"Qo, Ko, Ko."

The Master was dragged in. Fitted in a blue prison outfit and barely touching the floor with his bare feet, he looked miserable and drained. A white collar with a green flashing light was fitted around his neck, and his hands and ankles were manacled and linked by a rattling chain, weighing down his arms. He kept his head bowed.

"Master!' Doctor rose from seat. He wanted go over to him, but the Judoon soldier held him back.

"Ko, Xo!"

The Master looked up. The sight of the Doctor brought a shimmer of hope on his face, but then he noticed the ghostly witnesses seated in the rows. His eyes became large and fearful. He wanted to turn around and run away from that wall of cold accusing stares, but the Judoons officers only dragged him further into the room. They went over to a glass booth that was installed next to the central altar, and threw him inside before sealing the door.

"Master! It's alright." The Doctor waved at him. "I'm here. I'm here."

The Judoon pushed the Doctor back to the bench.

"Xo, Xo, No!"

The Doctor reluctantly obeyed the officer. He sat down again next to Wilf, but he kept his mind open to reach the Master.

_It's alright. Don't you worry. I'll get you out of here. I promise._

The Master sunk down on the floor and huddled up with his back against the glass. Silently, he begged with his eyes for the Doctor to not abandon him. The Doctor answered with a small encouraging smile, and crossed his hearts.

Xo, Zo, Lo, Ko, Wo."

The court ghosts all rose from their seats in unison, while the Judoon soldiers exchanged their guns from the left to the right hand side and stamped with their feet twice on their floor.

"We're supposed to stand." The Doctor whispered to Wilf. He quickly got up on his feet. Wilf followed his example.

Two women entered. They were dressed in wide silver gowns that shone like the moon, and strode down the aisle most graciously, as if they were gliding over a beam of moonlight. They wore long silver wigs that resembled those worn by judges. When they passed, Wilf caught a glimpse of their faces. He was struck by their serene beauty, and their similarity.

"Doctor." He whispered. "I'm not sure that I saw it right, but are those twins?"

The two women were closely followed by a third, who was dressed in all black. Her wig was white as virgin winter snow. Her features were identical to that of the others, but as the faces of the first two ladies showed absolutely no emotion, when the Lady in black caught sight of the Doctor, she had a look in her eyes that betrayed her agitation.

"God, are they triplets?" Wilf asked again.

The Doctor shook his head. "They are the Ladies Shadow Architect. The ones in white are the Ladies of Reason and Moral, the one dressed in black is the Lady of Compassion. It is said that the race of the Shadowers is as old as that of the Timelords. There are not many of them left after the destruction of their planet, but each child of the Shadow race is born with his or her identity split in three. Two of them will be ruled by the mind, one by the heart. They will be the ones who decide over the Master's fate."

As he spoke, the Lady Shadow Architect in the black gown passed by, and threw a fleeting glance at the Doctor.

After they ascended the steps up to the high alter, the two ladies in silver sat down side by side on the seats that were prepared for them on top of the platform. The lady in black took the seat that was placed one step below.

"The Shadow race has evolved over millions and millions of years. They are as ancient as they are wise, with their minds ruling over their heart." The Doctor further explained to Wilf with his arms crossed over his chest.

Mister Foks made an appearance. He strode towards the high alter confidently, climbed the staircase with a spring in his steps, and whispered into one of the silver robe Ladies's ear.

"And now, it seems, the lawyer is getting a hold over Reason." The Doctor said, watching him worriedly.

"Is that that nasty man again? That mister Foks?" Wilf muttered. "Oh, that can't be a good thing."

Sitting too far away to hear what was being said, the Doctor only saw how Foks pointed at Wilf and answered the Lady of Reason's questions. She then looked at the old man, and gave a slight nod of understanding that stirred up anxiety in the Doctor's hearts.

3.

Mister Foks, who functioned as the court prosecutor, ran the trial with the efficiency of a seasoned bookkeeper. He summoned the court-ghosts to the witness stand, and let them speak out, one by one, the sad misfortunes that had befallen them by the Master's hands. The court-ghosts answered his questions in toneless voices, as if they were dictating stone-cold facts to a machine, while their faces remained expressionless masks. The Doctor explained to Wilf that they could no longer express their true feelings of grief or anger, or anything-else, because they were but a recollection of memories, kept within a fading physical form. These people were not truly present, they were like writers, who had left their thoughts behind in print on paper, while the mind that had created it had decayed and had been returned to dust. Wilf watched how each one of them was asked by mister Foks to point out the man who had destroyed their lives, and all of them had pointed at the Master.

There were men and women, and even children. There were humans and Timelords, and other alien races, so strange and exotic that Wilf had never even dreamt that they existed. There were people who were close to the Master. His father, his lifetime-companion, his wife.

As the trial progressed, Wilf couldn't suppress a growing sense of indignation for the injustice that these victims had suffered. Most of all, he couldn't understand why these crimes were committed. He couldn't imagine a boy killing his father, or a husband, pushing his loving wife so far that she would try to kill him, twice. He couldn't imagine a man with such a deranged soul that he would take pleasure in torturing another conscious being, or would find joy in pointless murder.

The Doctor remained silent during those initial hours as mister Foks presented his case. He kept his eyes on the Master who, with each witness summoned by the prosecution, gradually lost his courage to look the audience in the eyes. By the time the prosecutor questioned the last of the witnesses, the Master was already reduced into a pitiful heap of misery coiled up on the floor.

During the trial, the droid that had carried the suitcase and the scrolls, acted as a scribe. Wilf, who had wondered what those silver orbs that fell out of the suitcase were for, discovered that they were used for recording. The droid would swallow the bare metal sphere into his body, and record each accusation and each testimony given by the victims on the smooth metallic surface, before spewing it out and placing it on a large silver bowl placed in front of the witness stand. Soon, the tireless scribbling of the little droid amounted to an impressive pyramid of silver balls that was then presented to the Ladies Architect by a Judoon officer. By the way the officer buckled his knees as he carried the bowl, Wilf could tell that the load was heavy.

"What are they going to do with those things?" Wilf asked. The Doctor didn't reply, but nodded grimly at the scale.

"You mean they going to weight it? Against what?"

"Justice." The Doctor said, following the plate of silver orbs with an anxious gaze as it was bought to the balance.

"But that's nonsense. Justice is a concept, an idea. It isn't a real, physical thing, and it certainly doesn't weight anything."

"It's composed of reason and moral, and it weights as much as the person who reflect over it thinks it is worth. As it happens, the Ladies Architect believe that there is nothing in the entire universe as essential as justice."

The two silver robe ladies both took a feather from their head ornaments of their wigs and placed it on a second silver tray that was presented to them. The two white feathers were carried to the balance as well.

"They're not going to weight that pile against those feathers, are they?" Wilf commented. "If that's so, the Master won't stand a chance."

A Judoon picked the two feathers up from the tray and let it drift down on the right copper pan of the beam balance. Not surprisingly, the weight of the two feathers did not move the scale. Then another Judoon officer emptied the tray with the silver balls into the left copper pan and the balance swayed, taking a dip to the left hand side. Wilf had half-expected that the left pan would crash on the floor due to its heavy load, but surprisingly, the balance swayed back towards the right, as if the weight of the two feathers could counteract the load of the heavy metal balls. The Doctor watched anxiously how the balance flung from left to right and back again, till it finally settled down, with the left pan hanging slightly lower than the right.

The Doctor sank back and rubbed in his eyes, fearing that it was now all over.

"Please. Please. Lady in black." The Doctor muttered. "Lady of compassion. Please speak out your voice." He gazed up at her with begging eyes. _You came to me last night. You know my reasons for defending him. You alone understand why this man needs mercy._

The Lady in black showed a change of expression as she contemplated. Persuaded by the Doctor's compassion for his fallen friend, she picked a black feather from her wig and gestured to an officer to add it to the others. As soon as her feather touched the copper pan, the scale swayed gently from side to side, till it stopped perfectly still in equal balance.

"Yes!" Doctor sighed out of relief. It doesn't mean that the Master was out of danger, but al least there was now a chance for a more lenient verdict. Perhaps the court wouldn't sentence him to death, but exile him instead, or sent him to lifetime imprisonment. Perhaps they would spare his life.

Mister Foks turned the corners of his mouth downwards and glared at the Doctor. This wasn't what he had expected. Still, a good prosecutor should always come to court well prepared to defend his case.

He climbed the stairs and briefly communicated with one the Ladies in silver at the back. The Lady of Reason's eyes glided over the room and rested on Wilf. She nodded firmly and sent out two Judoon soldiers who came over and collected Wilf from the bench.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Wilf asked, as one of the officers grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the Doctor. "Where you taking me?"

"What do you want with him?" The Doctor made an attempt to rise up from his seat but was pushed back down by the remaining Judoon officer. "Let him go, he did nothing wrong."

"Stay calm Doctor, the prosecution has good cause to bring the human Wilfred Mott into the case." The Lady Reason explained.

The Judoon brought Wilf over to the witness stand where Mister Foks was waiting. With his gun pointing at the old man, the soldier encouraged Wilf to step up the platform.

"I will now summon to the witness stand, Wilfred Mott, who has seen the atrocities and crimes committed against the human race by the Master in the year 2006 on the planet Earth." Foks spoke to audience in a clear voice.

"What are you talking about? What has he done?" For as far as Wilf was concerned, the Master didn't show up in his life until that horrible Christmas of last year. He was quite sure that he hadn't dealt with him before.

"Wilfred Mott, do you know who this man is?" Pointing at the accused cowering inside the glass booth.

"Yes, he's the Master."

"Do you also know him by another name?"

"No. Unless he has an alien name that he never uses. But this is also what the Doctor calls him."

Mister Foks leaned towards Wilf. "Are you sure?"

"Uhm. Well, he also kinda looks like Harold Saxon." Wilf pondered, suddenly remembering more than he though he would. "But it can't be him." Wilf scratched over his head and frowned.

"Who is this Harold Saxon?"

"He was our prime minister elect for a short while, but the lad went insane."

"What happened to him?"

"Well, he had something to do with the American president's death, but – I dunno, I suppose the news reports weren't very clear. One day we had him as our prime minister, and the next he was removed from office and was replaced by Gordon Brown. I'm sorry. It's all a bit hazy. It's really strange, normally I'm very good at remembering stuff like that, and I do follow the news."

"You can't remember?"

"No, I don't."

Mister Foks nodded knowingly. "My lady judges. The victims present here at court today are but a fraction of those who were murdered by this tyrant. Unfortunately, the mind of the accused had severely deteriorated and not all of the victims could be retrieved from his memories. Ironically, those who are present owe their claim for justice solely to the good Doctor, who had helped the accused to regain his recollections. I'm sure that you are all aware how his work has benefited the case so far. However, there are also victims whose memories were, on purpose, _not _restored by the Doctor. These were the human victims on Earth, in what the Doctor called _the year that never was_."

"Objection!" The Doctor yelled. "You can't charge the Master for those crimes!"

"And why is that? Because they didn't happen in your eyes?" Mister Foks looked back at the Timelord with a pompous expression on his face. He took the scroll handed over to him by the droid and waved it in the air. "Let me inform the court of what I've found in the court's archives, filed under unchargeable violations against time." He began to read from the scroll in a loud voice for all to hear. "It was recorded by the Shadow Proclamation that in the year 1221454 of the court registry, on the planet Earth, the Timelord called the Master took the disguise of Harold Saxon and rose to power as the prime minister of England. Using a paradox machine that he had created, he breached the fabric of reality to let a regressed and murderous form of the future human race enter into this reality. After overthrowing the Earth governments by force, he exterminated one tenth of the human population on his first day of his tyrannical rule." He looked up from the scroll at the lady judges and slowly turned to the Doctor. "That's 680890000 souls. Murdered in cold blood. You're telling me that all that bloodshed didn't happen?"

"It did happen." The Doctor admitted, guiltily. "The Master, he did kill all those people…but…but I reversed it. The paradox machine was destroyed and time was turned back to before the Toclefanes entered our universe. Please, lady judges, you can't let him charge the Master with this."

"You objection has no ground and is denied." Moral and Reason said, speaking out their decision in unison. "Proceed with your case, mister Foks."

Mister Foks turned back to Wilf with renewed confidence.

"Now mister Mott, please don't be frightened." The sly prosecutor said. The malicious glint in his eyes slowly turned crimson as he approached. "The process won't hurt you. At least not physically."

"What are you doing?" Wilf muttered, slowly backing away from him, but like many others before, he couldn't resist staring into Foks's prying eyes.

Lost in that devilish and mesmerizing gaze, Wilf was brought back to 2006, and saw what had happened in that year that was erased from history. He witnessed the terror and the bloodshed of the initial days, before his family and neighbors were led away from their homes and condemned to work as slaves in brutal concentration camps. Wilf remembered how his daughter Sylvia fell severely ill and how he had found her lifeless body, stiff and cold, covered underneath a grime threadbare blanket in the barracks on a freezing winter morning. He remembered being forced to drag her to a pit and bury her in an unmarked grave with numerous other victims. He saw in his mind's eye how Donna's spirit and body was broken by the cruelty of the guards after she was caught stealing food from the kitchen larders. She was made to stand in the courtyard and was executed before his eyes. The snow stained crimson where her head hit the ground.

"Stop this. Stop this, please." Wilf pleaded, unaware that hot tears were streaming down his cheeks.

But Foks continued relentlessly, and hungrily extracted the hidden imprints from those phantom events in order to generate new witnesses for the trial. The nave filled with a large group of additional court ghosts of the victims that Wilf had encountered, and the Doctor watched with horror how the ghostly forms of Sylvia and Donna appeared on the benches.

"You can't! You can't do this!" Yelled the Doctor.

"That's another 50 victims, brought back from obscurity." The prosecutor spoke triumphantly, finally tearing his gaze from Wilf. The old man slumped forward, shocked by what just had happened, he had to steady himself with both hands on the stand.

The scribe droid had swallowed a new silver sphere and was processing the new accusations like mad.

"Stop writing! Stop putting that down!" The Doctor ordered desperately.

"It's the truth Doctor." Mister Foks said accusingly. "A truth that you wanted delude by a telling a lie."

"Listen to me, all those people were saved. No-body died by his hands. I saved all of them!"

Mister Foks let the Judoon officers carry a heartbroken Wilf back to the benches.

"That doesn't make him less guilty of what he had done." Foks objected, crossing his arms over his chest and raising his chin in the air. "If anything, we could consider you an accomplice of his crimes for the way you keep defending him."

For a brief moment the court fell silent. With a hopeless expression on his face, the Doctor watched how the guilt-ridden Master shielded his face with his hands to hide himself from the new victims.

"My lady judges, I would like to proceed by summoning the Timelord called the Doctor to the witness stand." Mister Foks spoke as he entered the last phase of his defence with calm and confidence.

Doctor glared up at mister Foks, his eyes flashing with apprehension.

"You are you afraid to tell the truth, are you?" Foks said with a polite smile. For now, he was a man on top of his game.

Doctor stepped forward silently, and braved the persecutor's challenging stare.

"Like I said, there were more victims." Mister Foks continued, without taking his eyes from the Doctor. "In total more than 5447120000 souls died by the accused's hands. That was 80% of the planet's population. Mister Mott provided only a limited link to the imprints for he was restricted to his own experiences, and to him the horrible events were completely reversed. However, the Doctor here was in the eye of the storm. To him, that year of Harold Saxon's reign was not erased from history. His bonds with the victims are as strong and uncorrupted as yesterday's memories."

"If you want me to incriminate the Master by summoning those victims to court. You know I won't participate." The Doctor protested determinedly.

"My dear Doctor, do you think you really have a choice?" Foks laughed.

Foks stared into the Doctor's eyes. A Timelord mind's could be a like strong fortress, impossible to penetrate, but Foks was created for the very purpose to look into a man's soul. No matter how strong the mind, he could breach through the defenses with ease.

The Doctor gasped as the unwanted memories surfaced in his mind and was shared with the prosecutor. The decimation of the human population, the genocide that followed in the months after, when the Master had kept him and his companions as prisoners on his ship. How he had made him stand on the bridge and watch as the good people of Earth, women, men en children were rounded up and slaughtered, burnt, and eliminated. Foks grinned as he collected these violent images, extracting the immense human tragedy from the Timelord's mind and turning it into new witnesses. As a result, the benches filled up quickly till every space was seated with a lost soul.

"5447120000 victims in total, my lady judges." Foks spoke dramatically. "That's more than ever can be fitting inside this chapel. All them suffered and died under horrible circumstances, all by the hand of that tyrant."

Foks tore off his gaze, and the Doctor slouched down, drained of his strength. The droid eyes glowed red as it finished with recording the additional charges and spat out one crimson globe on the silver tray.

"Place the accused's crimes against the human race on the scale." The Ladies of Reason and Moral ordered.

Two Judoon officers were needed to lift the tray with the red orb. They placed it in the left copper pane. This time there could be no doubt, the scale dropped rapidly at the left hand side, and the sheer load of the Master's crimes made the pan clattered on the floor. The orbs scattered over the ground and rolled in every direction, while the feathers drifted down gently, landing next to the upturned pan.

"For the accused, it is finally doom's day. The day of reckoning." Foks said, triumphant in his conclusion. "My lady judges, I hereby rest my case."

"We have reached a verdict." Lady Reason spoke first. The severity of her tone made clear the gravity of his offences. "I find the defendant Timelord called the Master, who has been accused of crimes against humanity, namely murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and cruelty committed against any of the registered conscious races by the shadow Proclamation - guilty."

"Guilty." Lady Moral said, sharing Reason's decision.

The Doctor's eyes turned to Lady Compassion, who breathed out deeply as she caught the look on the Doctor's face.

"Guilty." She finally admitted, and hereby sealed the Master's fate.

The Doctor shook his head, unable to accept the verdict. "Oh you are a self-righteous bunch." He said quietly. "Top drawer hypocrites. Especially you." Doctor nodded at mister Foks.

"What are you implying, Doctor?" The prosecutor raised an eyebrow at his protests.

"Judoon justice, a contradiction in term, that's what it is. What is justice here in this court but the title of a pantomime, with the accused already sentenced the moment he is charged with the crime?" The Doctor ridiculed.

"Don't mock the court of Justice, Doctor." Lady Reason said in an icy tone.

"Mister Foks has presented the evidence to us. We've heard the accusations and the accounts of the witnesses and the victims." Lady Moral commented while her eyes remained cold and hard as sapphires.

"We've reached a verdict within the rules of Shadow law." Reason and Moral added in unison.

The Doctor continued to shake his head. "Those court ghost's you've summoned are not victims. At least not the real victims. They're just cyber-ghosts, most of them conjured up by the conscience of the very man you try to condemn. If something should be held in doubt by reason it should be the reliability of the memories of a man who's conscience is ridden with guilt!" The Doctor argued.

"You're implying that our system is flawed?" Reason inquired, visibly offended by the allegation.

"Oh I'm not merely implying, I know it for sure! Your system is flawed, because it would only condemn a man who has a conscience, who has come to a moral understanding of what he had done wrong." The Doctor raged.

"What are you trying to do Doctor? You're twisting the facts, ridiculing the courses of justice!" Mister Foks objected.

"Well then, charge me for it! But I won't stop. The Master cannot fend for himself. Even if you would allow him to speak, which would never happen here in this bogus court. There are still things that needed to be said in his defense." The Doctor stepped forward, his hands folded as if in a prayer. "Ladies of justice, don't you see what I'm trying to make clear to you? Without his sense of guilt, the Master wouldn't be able to supply the prosecutor the imprints of his victims. Like my wise old friend Wilfred Mott had pointed it out to me, a remorseless man would have forgotten those crimes, and would stand in court with a clean conscience, simply because he wouldn't be burdened by one."

"This is preposterous. You cannot blame the system!" Foks ridiculed.

The Doctor ignored him and nodded at the prosecutor. "Take mister Foks here, for example."

Foks huffed in indignation. "And what about me sir?"

For the first time that he came to court, the Doctor smiled. "A mind-melt works in both directions, mister Foks. As you were staring into my soul and investigating my conscience, I could see into yours. And you know what?"

The Doctor leaned forward on the witness stand towards the astounded prosecutor. "I couldn't find one."

"What are you implying, that I am without a soul? Without a conscience?" Foks laughed nervously.

"Tell me mister Foks." The Doctor said, raising his chin in the air. "You with your polite smile and correct mannerism and machine-like efficiency in handling criminal charges. Your actions are always so precise, and flawless. It's a level of functioning that couldn't really be expected from a living being who is controlled by a messy tangle of neurons and a concoction of confusing emotions, could it? I wonder, who has exactly created you?"

A sly smile crawled over Foks's lips as he actually considered the Doctor's description of him as a complement. "Well spotted Doctor. The Judoons created me. I'm an android. I don't deny it. It's a fact. But it's one that's rather irrelevant to the case. Besides, the Shadow Proclamations knows what I am. They do a background scan before they let anyone join the force."

"An android, without conscience, practicing law, acting as the prosecutor for the Shadow Proclamations. Now what's wrong with that picture, hey?" Doctor asked with eyebrows raised.

"Mister Foks has served the court of justice for many years. His records are thus far unblemished." Moral defended him.

"Really? His conscience is unblemished too I reckon. Since he doesn't have one. The perfect civil servant to judge, but never to be judged. However, I did find the digital recording unit on past events inside mister Foks's mind. To you and me, the non androids in the room, that's his memory. What I have discovered in there - let me say it's rather blemishing." Doctor clacked his tongue and stared at Foks with a cocky expression on his face.

"My database has nothing to do with the case at hand." Foks objected nervously.

"Au contrary, it proves my point. Tell me mister Foks, where is your sidekick, your infuriating rhino-friend, mister Baines?"

"How should I know. His presence is not required at court." Foks snapped.

"Lady Compassion, please do me a favor and ask mister Foks about what he has done to mister Baines. He can't lie off course when you ask him."

"Mister Foks." Lady Compassion asked as she complied to the Doctor's remarkable request. "What have you done with mister Baines?"

Like all the other who had once been questioned by the Lady Shadow Architect, Foks was compelled to tell the truth. "I – I got rid of him." He stammered.

"You mean you forced him to resign?"

"No." Foks replied, forcing himself to keep his answers short.

"What have you done with him? And be precise." The Lady asked again, her suspicion aroused by Mister Foks's unusual cryptic reply.

"I've tricked him to have a word with me in the transmission room. Then I corrupted the console and activated the teleporter. He was sent out in transmission without clear destination coordinates."

"So, you killed him." Lady Compassion concluded.

"Yes." Foks admitted reluctantly.

A communal gasp was heard in court.

"There's more. Ask him about mister Baines's predecessor, mister Croup, and the Judoon officer before that, mister Solfol." The Doctor pressed on.

"What did you do to mister Croup and mister Solfol?" Moral and Reason asked infurious voices.

"I killed them." Foks admitted almost immediately as he realized that his game was up and he could no longer hide the truth.

"You killed all the officers that you worked with and couldn't stand. Because you got so irritated by their stupidity and clumsiness. You thought they held you back so you removed them from your side." The Doctor explained.

"They deserved it." Mister Foks spat, allowing his temper to slip. "They were such morons, simpletons with more muscle than mind, most of my precious time was wasted on trying to clean up the mess behind them. My Ladies of justice, I was just trying to optimize my workforce. As you know, I'm very passionate about my job!" Mister Foks defended himself.

"Spoke the guilty man without remorse." The Doctor stared at the lady judges seated on the high altar, knowing now that they understood him perfectly. "And yet, if you would try to judge him using the same system that you have exposed the Master to today, mister Foks would be found not guilty and be cleared of any charges. His database is not linked to a conscience, so therefore it could never supply a functional connection with his victims to gather the evidence against him." He put his hands inside his pockets and strolled forward with his chin raised in defiance. "Your justice system is flawed because a remorseless criminal would walk free, while an criminal who is ridden by remorse will be charged fully for his crimes and will have to pay for his honesty with his life."

"I've heard enough." Lady Moral spoke, reluctant to see the Doctor continue. "Officers, take mister Foks into custody."

"You can't do this to me!" Mister Foks struggled to free himself. "I was acting with the best of intentions. I was doing this for the good of the force."

"Mister Foks, you are charged with the crimes against Judoon officers Baines, Solfol, and Croup. Any appeals will be further assessed in the court of justice. Take him away." Lady Reason ordered, without pity for her former loyal assistant, and eager to remove this visible stain on their records out of sight as quickly as possible.

The Doctor watched how Foks was escorted from the courtroom. Wilf sat quietly opposite of the witness stand, and catching the Doctor's eyes he returned him a brittle smile. The old man was still shaken by the hideous things that he had witnessed inside his own mind after being exposed to mister Foks. Luckily for him, the effects weren't long-lasting and the fake memories were already starting to subside back into the fog of sub-consciousness.

Reason beckoned the Doctor to come further forward.

"As for you Doctor. You have made your point." She said, her voice as calm as a frozen river.

"We cannot claim that our system is flawless." Moral continued.

"Then retract the last accusations." The Doctor demanded. "The crimes of Harold Saxon have all been reversed. By the laws of logic, you can never accuse him of these crimes."

"Even if we did, Doctor, our verdict will remain the same." The two silver ladies answered in unison.

"But the scale wasn't tipped towards the Master's crimes. The feather of lady Compassion brought everything back in balance. You have to be spare him!"

"My dear Doctor. Our court has two functions." Moral explained, her voice finally betraying a hint of compassion for the Doctor's case. "One is to bring justice to those who are the victims. You're right that we cannot base our verdict too heavily on the court-ghosts, for the crimes against them would weigh far more in a remorseful man's conscience than in the stone cold heart of a ruthless soul. However, the second function of our court is to prevent future transgressions. If such heinous crimes like those that were committed by the Master does not receive the maximal penalty, what kind of example would be set for future generations? How do we then prevent equally ruthless men from doing the same?"

"But you can't!" The Doctor pleaded, realizing that the death penalty still stood. "Please. Let me take full responsibility over him. I swear on my honor, I'll be his guard day and night from now on. I'll make sure he won't hurt anyone. Please, give him another chance!"

"This is not an option Doctor."

"Ladies of justice. I'm begging you, make him not into an example of your hunger for retribution, but of your compassion!"

"I'm sorry, but the verdict stands." Reason stated.

"The Timelord called the Master, on the accounts of the indictment on which you've been convicted-" Moral continued.

Lady compassion swallowed hard. "This jury sentence you to death." She added softly.

"No! You can't! Not now he has finally come to his senses! Please!" The Doctor begged.

"The penalty is to be carried out immediately, and shall be recorded for prosperity as a warning." Moral and reason spoke, their voices once again turning efficient and cold.

The Master watched with hollow eyes how the Doctor continued to appeal for him, although he knew in his hearts that the case was lost. Like a child who knew it had done wrong, and had anticipated a beating, it felt like he wasn't quite there now it was finally happening at last. Numbness slowly spread throughout his body as he waited in silence till most of the Judoon officers had cleared the courtroom. Only the Ladies of justice and the witnesses remained. The Doctor, still unable to accept the verdict, kept pleading when two remaining guards acted as executioners headed to the console connected to the booth. There they activated the execution program, and a threatening drone rose from the bowels of the machine, triggering a harsh circle of light that hit down on the Master.

"Stop this! Please! You can't do this!" Panic grasped the Doctor's hearts as he realized what they were about to do. He ran forwards to the booth, but was held back by the two Judoons who grabbed him harshly by the shoulders.

"I'm sorry Doctor, but there is nothing you can do for him now." Lady Compassion said ruefully. She lowered a black veil over her face, a ceremonial gesture that was mimicked by her split egos Moral and Reason who hid their indifferent faces behind veils of white lace.

"Master, I'm sorry. I tried." The Doctor uttered, his voice a miserable, burdened whisper. His hands clenched and unclenched helplessly by his sides. _I really tried_. A tear glided down his cheek. _You're right. I am an idiot. I'm not smart enough to save you. I'm so sorry._

The Master shook his head, his eyes filled with an unexpected kindness and understanding that refused to hold the Doctor accountable for his fate. The relentless drone from the machine became a threatening roar that drew up the Master's gaze at the circle of dilating light that would bring his eminent doom. His eyes became tearful. Now the final moment was upon him, he felt the last of his strength seep out of his body and his courage evaporate. A frightened whimpered escaped his lips. His hearts were pounding in fear.

_No. Look at me Master. Keep your eyes on me._ The Doctor pleaded.

The Master averted his eyes from the blinding light, and stared across the courtroom at the Doctor. He looked at him for strength, and found some measure of comfort in his caring eyes. He was thankful that in these final moments of his life, he was still given these precious seconds. For 900 years they had lived as mortal enemies, but now at least, hey would be parting as friends.

He could not speak, nor tell the Doctor with his mind the words that were weighing too heavily on his hearts. In silence, he bid his dear childhood friend farewell.

It happened so fast. There was hardly time for the Doctor to act. The blinding light turned a fierce crimson. Its deadly radiance filled the entire booth and engulfed the Master, who let out a blood-curling scream.

The Doctor lurched forward but was kept back by the Judoons. "Stop this! Stop this PLEASE! I beg you!"

But there was no mercy to be expected from the three judges who sat on their raised seats on the altar. Silent and unyielding they were, like heartless stone statues. Pinned in his position, but so achingly close, the Doctor had to watch helplessly how the 500000 rads of radiation penetrated each living cell of the Master's body and ripped it apart. The Master sunk through his knees, wrecked by pain, he tossed his head from side to side, while shielding his eyes from the obliterating rays with twisting arms, but there was no way to escape the pitiless beams. His face contorted in agony. Collapsing on the floor, he yelled out madly before his hearts burst in his chest.

The Doctor's screams for mercy joined that of his dying friend, in one final moment of communion.

The Judoon executioner finally drew back the lever. The lights in the booth dimmed, and the sound of the machine died down.

It was over.

The Judoons let go of the Doctor, who sank through his knees and sprawled upon the floor. It felt as if the Master's executioners had ripped him open and had cut out his hearts.

4.

Hours had passed since the execution, and the Judoons had left the courtroom, taking with them the alien artifacts that would otherwise raised suspicion when the humans discovered them in the abbey. The court ghosts had also disappeared, vanished into thin air the moment the Master perished. Their existence in this world was no longer needed. The Ladies of Justice had also left. Moral and reason strode out of the courtroom without looking at the Doctor, who sat on the floor with knees pulled up against his stomach, a captive of his own all-consuming misery. Only Lady Compassion had halted her pace and had waited for a moment, quietly standing near the doctor while hesitating to comfort him. Finally, she decided that no kind words could help the wretched Timelord overcome his grief. She would have to let time mend his wounds.

"You have four hours before we let the abbey rejoin the earth's timeline." She said to Wilf. "Stay with him."

"I wouldn't leave his side. Even if the devil makes me." Wilf reassured her.

She laid a hand on Wilf's shoulder, and smiled kindly at him before she left.

In the end only Wilf and the Doctor remained. The Master's lifeless body lay on the floor, still on the exact spot where he had fallen after the execution booth was teleported back to the ship. A curled up, frightened figure, his last gaps of agony were still visible on his features. His eyes were mercifully closed.

"Doctor, are you alright?" Wilf asked sympathetically. He didn't want to disturb him in his grief, but he did realize that soon the extra time granted by the Lady Architect would run out.

The Doctor wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His tears had dried into salty stains on his cheeks. He felt cold and numb. Dead inside. His hearts had turned to stone.

"I know you're still grieving, but we have to do something with his remains."

The Doctor gazed back at Wilf.

"You can't just leave him here for all to see. We need to bury him, maybe there is a certain Timelord ritual…"

"Oh Wilf." The Doctor sobbed. The memory of the last time that he had to perform the Master's funeral rites struck him in his hearts like a knife and he could no longer hold back his tears. Wilf took the grief-struck Timelord in his arms and let him cry on his shoulders.

"Just let it all out." Wilf shushed. "Let it all out. There is no shame in it."

The Doctor buried his face in the old man's jumper, choking on his tears. This was all his fault. No matter what his reason would try to convince him later on, how it would claim that the Master had only harvested the violent, pitiless death that he had sowed with his past cruelties, he wouldn't be able to forgive himself. In his hearts, he would always believe that the Master's life had been destroyed because of him. That was the unforgiving burden of guilt that he would have to carry with him for the rest of his life. There would be no opportunity to atone for his crime, no chance for redemption.

The Lady Shadow Architect did not know it, but she and her split-egos had not only judged over the Master's fate, but also over his.

They had condemned him for life.

There was just a tiny movement of the fingers. Just a twitch, nothing more. Still. For someone who was believed to be a corpse this was one hell of an achievement.

A second twitch. This time of the leg. As if he was kicking in his sleep. The Doctor was too much caught up in his grief to notice it, but Wilf saw the movement in the periphery of his eyes. He glanced over the Doctor's shoulders at the Master.

A gasp for air, followed by a soft cough.

Wilf's eyes grew wide in shock.

The Master's sucked in a deep breath of air, straining his lungs. Then his eyes flew wide open, as if he was waking up from a frightening nightmare. He rose to an upright position, wheezing for air and coughing violently.

"Doctor?!" Wilf breathed, and tapped the Timelord on his shoulder.

The Doctor spun around. "Master?" He muttered through his tears. Like Wilf, he couldn't believe what he saw.

The Master continued coughing, but stared back at the Doctor with a glint of alertness in his eyes.

"Master!" The Doctor yelled, and crawled towards him.

"What?!" The Master said aggravated, while still trying to regain his breath.

"Doctor, he's speaking!" Wilf pointed at the Master. "He couldn't do that before!"

"Yes, 500000 rads of radiation did give a bit of a spark to my bedazzled brains. It triggered the neurons to heal more efficiently. Thank you for pointing out the bloody obvious, granddad." The Master muttered sarcastically, while he rolled his head over his stiff shoulders, making it crack most satisfactory.

"They didn't-" The Doctor stammered. "They didn't kill you."

'No, they didn't, but they came pretty close." The Master grinned. He looked down to check his arms and legs and traced with his fingertips over his face, feeling his cheeks and brows, and pinching his nose. "Not close enough." He sighed. "I'm healed, but I'm still trapped in this cursed body." He looked up at the Doctor and giggled insanely. "500000 bloody rads and still no regeneration." He spread his arms out. "How much would it take?" He exclaimed.

"Doctor, not that I'm not happy for you or anything, but why is he still alive?" Wilf asked.

"I don't know." The Doctor muttered. "It's…it must have something to with his accelerated healing capacity…Rassilon." The Doctor's eyes were bulging as his mind quickly strung all the facts together. "Off course! It must be Rassilon! He only brought you back to make you suffer an agonizing death. He never thought that you would actually survive the destruction of Gallifrey. Master, Rassilon's cruel act of retribution has actually saved your life! He has made you -"

"Immortal." The Master finished the Doctor's sentence, and smiled as he realized the very irony of it. "By Gallifrey, I know the vile vicious bastard is dead, but…oh how I just _wish_ he was still alive to choke on this."

The Doctor launched forward, his eyes shining with tears of joy, keen to take him into his arms.

"What the hell are you doing?" The Master said, alarmed, he recoiled from the Doctor.

"Oh come on! Just one hug, you crazy sociopath! One tiny little hug! It wouldn't hurt you." The Doctor cheered, with relief washing over his face.

"Stay away from me!" The Master kept backing away till he reached the foot of the altar. He waved his hands anxiously at the Doctor. "Seriously, stay away."

The Doctor, who thought that the Master was just his acting like his grumpy old self, ignored his warnings and rushed over to him. He wrapped his arms around his chest. The moment they collided, a massive transfer of radiation energy coursed through the Doctor's body, paralyzing his muscles and ripping through his cells. His hearts tottered like an old clock and threatened to stop beating. But before that could happen, the Master grabbed hold of the foot of the altar and diverted a part of the violent energy into the steel and stone construction. The Doctor gasped, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets as he slipped out of the Master's arms like a boneless bag of skin.

5.

_The Tardis is so kind to remind me that it is almost time. Although I'm not eager to leave this world, I know she is right. _

_I'm so very tired. My legs buckle, my back hurts, and my head is stuffed with cobwebs. I cannot think clearly. All I want is to lie down and sleep. _

_Sleep, and let eternity lay claim me once more. _

_I know I can shut my eyes and lay in peace. I've done my duty to him. The Doctor. The man who had given me a second chance in life, a new beginning. Soon, I will face him again with no regrets or shame in my hearts, because I know that I've lived that life that he had given me to the fullest. _

_My old hearts rattle unsteadily, my pulse is weakening. My old body feels cold and drained. _

_I lay down in bed. Still fully dressed. At least I would like to appear decent when they find me. I rest my hands on my chest and close my eyes._

_I wonder if I will dream of those days gone by, those windswept hills on our beloved home planet, two children of Gallifrey running and screaming up to the sky. Or perhaps I would see, in my final moments, the two Timelords that we have become, that we once were, running side by side as we explore all the dangers and wonders of the universe. _

_Doctor, my dearest, oldest friend. You always ran faster than me, although in life, I've never admitted it. But you were always able to find the right track quicker than I did. But eventually, I'll get to our destination. I'll get there in the end. _

_I can just see him standing there, waiting at the top of the red slopes of Mount Perdition, waving down at me with that silly grin on his face. _

_Without a moment of hesitation, I run up the hill to join him._

6.

When he opened his eyes again, he was surprised to be onboard of the Tardis with Wilf's concerned face hovering right above his nose.

"Doctor, are you alright?"

Except for a strange feeling of déjà-vu, his dry throat and stiff muscles that screamed murder when he tried to use them, he was actually fine. He was lying on his back in his own bed, fully dressed, but covered under a double layer of blankets. Slowly, he shook his head and let the recollections of what had happened come back to him.

The first thing that entered his mind was the Master.

"Wilf where is the Master?"

"He's outside."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he's outside your bedroom."

Doctor's eyes went wide. "He's in the console room?"

He rushed out of the bedroom and ran down the corridor, followed by nervous Wilf. When he dashed into the console room he found the Master leaning over the controls. He had managed to break the chains, although the manacles were still secured around his wrists and ankles, and he was still wearing the white collar with the detection device around his neck. He was dancing around the Tardis core with a mad happy grin on his face.

"Ha! My dear Doctor, came back to join us from the dead? Can't blame you, it didn't agree with me either." He held a screwdriver upside down in his hand and whacked down the handle on the Tardis controls without much consideration.

"Hey! Stop that! What are you doing?"

"Just trying to hit some sense into it. The old girl won't listen to me one bit. She must remember the last time we went out together, she was kinda jumpy when I tried to fix her up with the paradox construction." He started tapping on the keyboards like mad. "Still, I think she's just playing hard to get."

"How?" The Doctor asked, running his fingers through his hair. "How did you get here? Who showed you where the Tardis was?"

"Granddad did." The Master nodded at Wilf. "He was worried about you. Thought you died on us. I told him to drag your dead corpse back to the Tardis. So you can absorb the healing powers of the core to help you restore." He giggled. "Really, you can't be but amazed by the sheer gullibility of these humans." He snorted.

"I-I though it would save you. And he told me he would help." Wilf looked puzzled. "Hey, does that he was lying to me?"

"Yes you moron." A giddy smile swept over the Master's face. "It does." He gave Wilf a smug wink.

"Master! Step away from the controls, you're not completely right in your mind yet." The Doctor touched the side of his temples to accentuate this rather urgent message. "You can't fly the Tardis. You need rest!"

"Oh hush, you stick in the mud spoil sport! That's the last time I let you tag along." He pointed accusingly at the Doctor. "I could have just left you stranded with old prune face over there. All I needed was the Tardis."

"Well why didn't you leave us alone?" Wilf asked, afraid that they have become the hostages of a mad homicidal alien. "Why did you trick us to come onboard?"

"Because it's more FUN!" The Master said, rolling his eyes because of the pure stupidity of the question.

"No please, be gentle with that, you can't force it!" The Doctor yelled in panic, but the Master ignored him completely and pulled down five levers at the same time, sending the Tardis in a mad spin.

"Master, stop this!" Doctor yelled, holding on to the console with a white-knuckled grip, but the Master was bouncing around the console room, exhilarated and drunk on the sheer pleasure of being alive and able to interact, he felt an unbound energy flowing through his limbs.

"Make me!" He threw back his head and laughed, and stabbed the buttons at random. Sparks came off the Tardis's core, setting the consoles on fire. Dangerous flames flared up. The core trembled violently, shuddering the windows and the very ground beneath their feet.

The Master looked at this mad chaos, and laughed joyously, while the Tardis continued to buck like a stubborn mule stung by an angry wasp.

Wilf clung on the railing for dear life, while the Doctor finally managed to place himself in front of the console.

"We're crashing!" He screamed as he checked the flashing readouts on the monitors.

"Oh absolutely!" The Master grinned madly, and spread his hands up in the air, enjoying every minute of it. "But you know what, as long as it's not on that rotating ball of dirt called Earth. I don't bloody care!"

The Doctor managed to slip his hand inside his breast pocket and took out his trusted sonic screwdriver.

"I'm afraid you'll be very disappointed." He muttered, and raising an eyebrow, he quickly whizzed the sonic over the navigation board.

_**The End**_

Okay, folks, this was it for Judoon Justice. Please let me know what you thought of the story, it keeps me writing. The Doctor and the Master (and Wilf) will return in two weeks time, on April the 10th in the next installment of the A Timelord and his Mad man series called "A murderous feast". NB: for those coming from LJ and having trouble submitting a review: just hit the review button underneath, you don't need an account to review, just fill in a a name.


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